Early Morning of the Animate Deceased
by Arctic Banana
Summary: When Soldier accidentally kills Merasmus' latest roommate, the magician retaliates by summoning zombies to attack his friends and jumpstarts an apocalypse. The RED team are forced to fight their way through ravenous zombies, escape from Teufort, and find Merasmus to force him to undo the curse and get rid of the zombies once and for all.
1. A Wizard Did It

_This is the larger story I alluded to in the last one I published. I wrote most of it with help from my roommate, Nicole, who provided ideas, did some editing, and even helped write some parts, so I am going to give her co-writing credit for this. Look for her author's notes alongside mine._

 _A head's up about this fic's tone: I tried to keep this lighthearted and zany, but that didn't always work. This fic rests squarely in "horror/comedy", but since I got a little too into writing about zombies, a few times shit gets real. Even when it does, take it with a grain of sodium chloride. It'll bounce from horror back to horror/comedy fairly quickly._

 _I was hoping to get this fic completed a week ago so I could post a chapter a day, but that didn't happen. It's complete at this time though and I'm just waiting for the Nicole Seal of Editing Approval before I can post the rest of it, so chapters will go up as she finishes editing. It's supposed to be a Halloween fic, but we'll probably be posting well into tomorrow since it's already fairly late here._

 _Nicole's Note: It took us a month, three bags of Kit Kats, two cases of Mountain Dew Code Red, a Halloween themed playlist (which basically means all the scary music Banana listens to and then suddenly Flashlight: The Cullen Song by Eleventyseven), and short breaks to marathon zombie movies and The Walking Dead for motivation, but dammit, we finished it!_

* * *

Today was a good day to go visiting old friends, or so Soldier thought. He got up bright and early, laced up his boots, remembered that he had to wear something other than boots to go outside or else the neighbors would call the cops again, and headed on his way. He didn't bother taking the bus or a cab or asking any of his merc friends for a ride, instead jogging the entire way to California. Once he arrived at his destination, he knocked three times, grew impatient, and just smashed a window with his shovel so he could climb in, unlock the door himself, climb back out, and go through the now unlocked door.

"What was that sound?!" a familiar voice asked. "Mom, is that you?! Who let you out of the basement?!" As he descended the stairs in his fluffy pink bunny slippers, MERASMUS! dropped his coffee mug down the remainder of the stairs when he saw Soldier standing in the living room covered in blood and broken glass. "What the...how the hell do you keep finding where I live?!" he demanded of his old roommate.

"Is this one of your friends, Merasmus?" another familiar voice asked. Into the room stepped Merasmus' latest roommate, John Wayne. He clearly didn't look pleased at the sight of the broken window or the blood and coffee all over the carpet.

"I heard you have a new roommate, so I brought you a house welcoming gift!" Soldier said proudly. He dug through his coat, searching the many, many pockets until he found a squashed box that he might have sat on and held it out in front of him.

Merasmus looked at the box in Soldier's outstretched hands with distrust before cautiously accepting it. "So help me if there's unrefrigerated sour cream in here..." When he finished unwrapping it, he stared at the contents with disbelief. "Is this a live hand grenade?!"

"Yes! See? It blows up when you pull the pin!"

To Merasmus' horror, Soldier reached into the box and yoinked the pin from the grenade. Realizing that it was about to explode in his hands, he panicked and tossed it, unwittingly blowing up John Wayne in the process.

"See? I wouldn't give you a grenade if it didn't work!"

Merasmus stared at the remains of his roommate in shock. "SOLDIER! CAN I GO A DAY WITHOUT YOU KILLING MY ROOMMATES?!" he screamed in anger.

"Nope!" Soldier said proudly.

"GET OUT!" Merasmus screamed.

"Enjoy your housewarming gift!" Soldier said obliviously as Merasmus forcibly shoved him out the front door.

* * *

Merasmus had finally finished scrubbing all of the brain matter and spilled coffee from the carpet and was now pacing back and forth in the living room in a bout of rage. He was really getting sick of Soldier's shit, that was for sure, and this moment had been the last straw. Not to mention what would happen when it was discovered that one of the world's biggest movie stars had just been blown up with a hand grenade.

"That idiot has got to go!" he said to himself as he tried to think of a plan that could both rid him of Soldier and solve the issue of his dead roommate at the same time. "I cannot go back to prison again!" He leaned against his bookshelf, glancing at it a moment when it wobbled, and spotted the title of a particularly dusty book. "I've got it!" he shouted at the top of his lungs to no one in particular.

Merasmus pulled the book off the shelf and blew the dust off of it, hacking up a lung hard enough that he almost threw up when he accidentally inhaled it in. After catching his breath, he slammed it on the table, wiping the rest of the dust off to reveal the title, _How to Raise the Dead with Household Ingredients (Bonus Sangria recipe inside)_. The book still had the bright orange "$2" sticker on the cover and the label with the name of the thrift store on the back since he clearly hadn't read it yet.

"Perfect..." he said to himself as he began to make another cup of coffee and gather ingredients together.

* * *

"Can't you use a knife to do that like a civilized human being?" Spy asked Sniper. He was using his kukri to carve a particularly large pumpkin.

"This _is_ a knife," Sniper pointed out.

"No, I mean a smaller one. One that isn't likely to take off your entire hand if you slip," Spy replied.

"It's working just fine." Spy shook his head and walked away, leaving Sniper to his devices. He got the feeling he was doing it because he knew it was bothering Spy anyway.

Usually it was only Engineer and Pyro that made a jack-o-lantern, which was basically a way of keeping Pyro occupied long enough that he was out of everyone's hair for the time being. This year however, they found themselves in the possession of about fifty or so pumpkins after Medic decided to "borrow" an unattended pickup that was transporting them to some kind of pumpkin festival. (They really got a lot of supplies from Medic hijacking random vehicles for unknown purposes, come to think of it. Rumor had it that's where all the doves came from.)

Most of their pilfered pumpkins had gotten shot up for target practice, their orange and pale yellow guts spread out across the target range like heads in a battlefield. Scout and Pyro dropped about five of them off of roofs of varying heights to see how big of a splat they'd make. What was left was currently being carved up, their guts splattered across the lunchroom table, across the floor, and leading down the hallway as though someone had skipped through the hall scattering pumpkin seeds like a flower girl at a wedding.

Engineer stayed nearby to keep an eye on Pyro, who had already carved three pumpkins and was now sitting by himself playing Candy Land with them, which was weird enough before you even realized that he was apparently losing. Medic and Heavy were both eating and Demoman was passed out and slumped over the end of the table. Generally there was nothing out of the ordinary about their nightly routines other than the fact that Scout and Sniper were currently lobotomizing the last of the bright orange squash.

"Hey Sniper, look," Scout said when he turned his pumpkin around. "He's sad because he's got a knife in his head."

Sniper smirked at Scout's pumpkin, which looked vaguely like Spy and had a butterfly knife sticking out of the side of its head and a few strings of pumpkin guts dribbling from the "wound". "It's missing something, mate."

Spy heard them both laughing and sighed with distaste when he saw them lighting a cigarette that they'd balanced in the mouth of a pumpkin that he guessed was supposed to be him. He was more offended by the idea that they thought he'd actually smoke something as cheap as Sniper's preferred brand of cigarettes than he was at the poor imitation of himself. He also discovered why one of his knives had gone missing that morning.

"You're both making a mess," he pointed out as though they could possibly be unaware of the pumpkin innards all over the floor.

"Pyro made the mess. We just made it better," Scout retorted.

The door slammed open, leaving a crack in the drywall behind it. "Men! Pyro!" Soldier shouted as he marched through the lunchroom. "I have returned!"

"We didn't even know you left," Sniper replied snidely.

"Are you covered in blood?" Engineer asked with concern.

Soldier looked at the shards of glass that were still jutting out of his arm and the wounds that looked like they were just about infected. "Huh. How long has that been there?" he questioned as though just noticing them.

"What exactly have you been doing?" Spy asked.

"Well..."

He pushed past him, having already lost interest in the matter. "Never mind, I'm sure it was something incredibly stupid."

He walked past Medic, who had just pushed his food aside and was mumbling insults in German over having to use his dinnertime to pull glass out of Soldier's arm, and nearly slipped on pumpkin guts on the way out.

"If any of you need me, I'll be in my room," he informed them on the way out.

Medic gave Demoman a shove to make room for Soldier to sit and swiped the empty bottles off the table. He remained passed out even as he fell to the floor with a thud and was rolled onto his side in case he threw up.

"Is that really a sanitary environment to be doing medical shit?" Scout asked skeptically.

"It's fine. There's enough alcohol on the table that it should be sterile," Medic replied. "So what were you doing really?" he asked Soldier.

"Oh, I heard that Merasmus had a new roommate, so I brought him a housewarming gift!" Soldier said proudly.

Everyone was silent as the weight of his implications sunk in. "Didn't that guy give you a restrainin' order?" Engineer asked.

"Yes, but I decided I wanted to go see him so I threw it away!"

"Threw it...away?" Heavy asked.

Sniper shook his head. "Mate, I ain't an expert on Yank law or anythin', but I don't think restrainin' orders work like that..."

"Oh, it's fine! He was happy to see me!" Soldier replied.

"Uh huh..."

Somehow none of them were convinced. They didn't think too much about it beyond that, though. Soldier ruining Merasmus' day was about as common as jackrabbits digging holes in the front lawn. Sometimes he retaliated and sometimes he just swore at the sky a lot and went back to his life, and considering there weren't any voodoo cursed ducks or anything attacking them, they must be safe from his wrath this year.

Right?

* * *

Demoman stirred awake at the feeling of a boot kicking his leg. He looked up to find Soldier staring at him and realized he was on the floor of the lunchroom. "I am waking you to inform you it is time for bed!" Soldier announced before walking away.

"Would'a hated to've slept through _that,_ " Demo grumbled as he got to his feet.

He slipped all over the pumpkin guts that Sniper and Scout had decided to leave for someone else to clean up and managed to stumble out of the room and down the hall. The entire base had the aromatic scent of pumpkin and several of Medic's doves as well as two of Soldier's raccoons were scrambling around eating the remains. One of the diseased procyonids, a particularly thin and mangy looking thing by the name of Private Paws, was perched on a shelf hissing at anyone she thought was coming too close to her stockpile of seeds.

Two of the carved pumpkins were already decorating the steps, a cute little smiling one that Pyro had made, and one sitting a step higher that was vomiting pumpkin guts all over the smaller one that Scout had made. Despite the fact that they were all the way to the right and away from the safety railing that ran down the center of the stairs, Demoman still managed to nearly trip over them when he stumbled drunkenly on his nightly battle with those damned demons known as the stairs. He hated stairs. One of these days he'd have to blow them all up. He stumbled and fell the remaining two steps, landing on his face in the middle of the hallway. When he looked up he realized that Heavy and Medic were both staring at him with concern.

"Who put those steps there?" he asked to save face.

"I'm fairly certain they were always there," Medic replied. The pair walked past him without bothering to see if he was alright, though Heavy looked at him over his shoulder as they moved on. They were sure he was fine. He had to have been made of adamantium to survive some of the drunken spills he took on a near daily basis.

Demo managed to get back up again and made his way somewhere to finish sleeping the alcohol off so he could get drunk again later. As he wandered aimlessly towards the nearest door, he glanced out the window and stopped. He looked closer when he thought he saw movement in the dark, vaguely outlined by the full moon. Must be a coyote, he thought to himself. Or maybe he was just hallucinating. He wasn't a hundred percent sure what was in that homebrewed crap that Sniper gave him, but he was pretty certain that at least one of the ingredients might have been floor cleaner. The figure had the obvious shape of a quadrupedal animal and when he saw two glowing orbs turn abruptly to stare straight at him through the glass, he was certain it was either the eyes of a coyote illuminated by the moon or a hallucination. No need to dwell on it any longer.

He passed out again in a nearby closet soon after, comfortably sprawled out on top of an array of boxes.

* * *

 _Why is Merasmus' latest roommate John Wayne, you may ask? Well that's quite an interesting story, and I'll tell you!_

 _...there was a John Wayne movie on TV. Really. That's the only reason. His roommate was originally going to be George Romero, but for some reason we thought John Wayne was funnier, and California is closer to New Mexico than Pennsylvania anyway._

 _Nicole's Note: So, uh, I don't know what else to add right now, so what starter are you guys picking for Sun and Moon? I think I'm going with litten myself._

 _Banana: I was going to go with Litten, but then they revealed the full evolutionary tree and now I'm in love with Rowlet's archer motif. I favor the dark type so by the end of the game I'll no doubt have 4 dark types in my party anyway and I think I need that Salandit, so I don't need another fire type._

 _...but you know I'll end up getting a Litten at some point anyway._


	2. Days Gone Bye

_Nicole wrote some of this chapter. That's why it sucks._

 _Nicole's Note: I didn't write any of this chapter. She just doesn't like the way some of it turned out, so she told me she was going to blame me._

* * *

Scout could not sleep. He'd been laying in bed for hours staring at the ceiling, but oddly enough even though it was well after midnight at this point, he didn't feel tired at all. Since he didn't feel like sleeping anyway, he got up and started walking around. Most of the team were night owls so chances were high that he wasn't the only one still up.

He could hear Medic and Heavy talking long before he even reached the end of the hallway. He poked in for a moment and was about to say something when he realized he probably did not want to be there right now and started to back out when he was spotted.

"Oh, Scout! Did you need something?" Medic asked. Some kind of purplish spleen or kidney or something that he was holding was leaking blood all over the floor. Medic dropped it into a cooler full of ice and kicked it aside.

"Uh...no thank you. What...what are you doing?" Dammit, the nerves were showing through in his voice.

Medic turned around and went back to slicing Heavy open and pulling out one of his lungs. Heavy was disturbingly conscious and nomming on a sandvich through the whole process as though he were sitting at the lunch table rather than going through a major operation.

"Nothing! Just a routine operation!" Medic replied cheerfully. He suddenly looked more suspicious. "Why? What have you heard?"

Scout spotted another bloodstained cooler with a label on it that read _'Water buffalo lungs 4 Heavy'_. "I haven't heard nothin'! Certainly nothin' illegal!" he quickly said to cover his ass.

He was understandably skeeved by the random sights of the medical ward from the numerous health code violations to the coolers full of shady looking organs to the fountain of blood that suddenly spurted from Heavy's chest cavity and sprayed all over Medic after he nicked something he really shouldn't have. Right now he was just looking for an opening to leave.

"Oh, uh...that happens sometimes," Medic lied as he clamped a hand over the nicked artery to try and staunch the blood flow.

Scout had a hard time formulating any form of a response. He was too horrified watching Archimedes nesting in Heavy's intestines and pecking at the liver that may or may not have always belonged to Heavy while Medic had his back turned to try and find something to stop up the blood.

"I feel dizzy. Is normal?" Heavy asked with concern.

"Oh, ja! That's perfectly normal!" Medic replied cheerfully. He shooed his dove away and stuffed a white towel into the bleeding orifice. He went back to operating on him as though this actually solved the problem rather than merely dyeing the towel crimson. "That's just your blood pressure rapidly dropping!"

"You seem to be busy, so I think I'll go see what everyone else is doing..." Scout excused himself. Archimedes perched on a shelf next to the door and eyed him. "Hey, you stay away from me bird! I remember what happened last time!" he threatened it.

He was rather glad to be out of there and didn't know why he bothered stopping in. Last time he did, Medic tried to put parts from something called a "pink fairy armadillo" in him. He passed Spy's room, but he'd rather eat broken glass than hang out with Spy, so he kept moving past the door.

He was almost to the kitchen. He noticed as he approached that someone was in there because one of the lights was on. Hopefully it would be someone who wasn't legally insane.

* * *

Sniper had his head on the table, but it was obvious that he was still awake by the way he tapped on the beer bottle in front of him. The radio on the counter was playing white noise. The station had oddly cut out mid-song about thirty minutes ago with no explanation and he just didn't feel like getting up to change it or turn it off. Every once in a while he heard a scraping sound at the back door but dismissed it until he barely noticed it anymore. Probably it was one of those plague bearing raccoons that they kept telling Soldier to stop bringing inside with him.

The door creaked open and shut just as noisily. "Can't sleep either?" Scout asked.

"Insomnia. You?" Sniper asked.

"I'm not sure. Just can't sleep." He went into the fridge and got out his ninth can of Bonk that day. "It's really weird though. I don't even feel tired for some reason."

"Uh huh..." Sniper nodded. He listened to see if he could hear Scout's heart racing from where he sat.

Scout set the opened soda on the table and dug through the cabinets, grabbing a box of Froot Loops from the back. "Do you know whose cereal this is?" he asked. Sniper subtly shook his head. "Eh. I'm gonna eat it then." He ate a dry handful straight from the box and sat down at the table.

To Scout's credit, he didn't sit there talking up a storm like he usually did when he had someone alone, probably because his mouth was occupied with eating the last of the stale Froot Loops. Sniper finished off the last of his beer, which was warm and flat by now, and got up to drop the bottle in the can. The door creaked again and Pyro entered the room, suddenly looking offended to see that Scout was eating his cereal.

"Wow, I guess no one can sleep tonight," Scout said without concern for the offense he had just caused the firebug.

"Mm-phm-hm-mmm-mm," Pyro replied.

Scout just stared at him. "I have absolutely no idea what you just said." He repeated whatever it was that he had stated. "Repeating it doesn't help. I don't speak mumble."

"He said he heard a strange noise outside." Engineer poked his head through the door behind him. Of course where Pyro was, Engineer would be not long after. "He thinks there's something out there."

"It's a desert. There's probably tons of things out there," Sniper pointed out. "And if it's anything like home, about half of it wants to kill us."

"Still ah'd rather check so he can go back to sleep," Engineer replied. Pyro looked at him and pointed towards the back door. He made his way towards the direction indicated.

Sniper remembered that the radio was on when the white noise was suddenly replaced with the earsplitting screech of the Emergency Broadcast System. He shut it off before it could wake up half the base and heard a dove that had been sleeping somewhere rustling after having been startled.

"You should probably listen to that. Maybe we're being invaded by commies," Scout pointed out.

"Last six times it went off was because someone sat on a button," Sniper replied. "I'm not about to trust it again."

Engineer reached the door, pulled back the curtain hiding the window, and stared through the glass with concern. "Uh, guys?" he said. "Mah dog is at the door, waitin' to come in."

"Mm-phm-hmm-hmm?" Pyro asked.

"Well nothin's wrong with that, really. Unless you count the fact that he's been dead fer six months," he replied.

They gathered at the window so they could see the hound dog, who was reduced mostly to a glowing eyed skeleton with decaying pieces of meat clinging to the dirt covered bones, liquefying organs spilling from the crushed ribcage, and a tire track across his back end from when Spy backed over him pulling out of the driveway. If the tire track wasn't enough to identify him, the dirty red collar that stuck stiffly to the dog's partially mummified neck declared that it was indeed Engineer's late German shorthaired pointer, Bucky. Bucky raised a paw and scraped it down the side of the door like he did when he wanted to come in. There were streaks of putrefied meat and mud on the other side, indicating that he had been scraping at it for probably hours.

"Well that's different," Scout replied.

"You see an undead dog standing at the door and all you can say is, 'that's different'?" Sniper asked.

"Well yeah. I've already seen ghosts, aliens, robots, vampires, gnomes, hats that defy gravity...oh, and there's a werewolf in the basement," Scout pointed out. "That kind of stuff's pretty normal around here at this point."

"Huh. Good point."

"Uh, guys?" Engineer said. "Bucky brought friends."

The darkness was now plagued with shining yellow orbs. One look at the undead dog's own glowing yellow eyes indicated that every one of the orbs was embedded in the rotting skull of a similar undead creature, and all of them were converging on the location.

"Oh great, another zombie apocalypse," Sniper grumbled. "Wonder how long it'll take for _this_ one to blow over?"

 _5 minutes later..._

They all sat in the kitchen together, a beer bottle in hand and Scout picking out and eating the marshmallows from a box of Lucky Charms, leaving the cereal pieces behind to eventually be ignored in the cabinet until they got stale and were finally thrown away by someone who got tired of looking at them. Sniper once more had his head on the table, though he wasn't even bothering to try to sleep now.

"How many are out there now?" he asked.

Scout got up and pulled the curtain back. The glowing eyed faces of several walking corpses stared back in at him, smearing drool and greenish corpse discharge all over the glass. He closed the curtain and walked back to the table, resuming his task of eating all of the marshmallows from the cereal.

"I'd say about a crapload," he replied.

Bucky howled at the other side of the door and scraped at it with his paws. "Ya know, ever since he died, ah thought ah'd love to see Bucky alive again. Ah was not actually expecting it to happen," Engineer sighed. "Ah remember how he figured out the lock on the window was broken and he used it to get into the kitchen. He was always a smart dog."

"That's what I thought every time my hamster died," Sniper agreed. "Then I found out that hamsters don't actually have nine lives and my mum was just replacing them every time they died and telling me that Boom resurrected overnight."

"Think we should tell the others?" Engineer asked.

"I'm sure they'll notice once they look out the window," Scout shrugged.

"Even still, might be nice to give 'em a heads up."

"Well we can't keep sitting in here," Sniper pointed out. "Eventually the place'll be overrun with 'em."

"Where the hell did they even come from?" Engineer asked.

"I dunno. Virus. Meteor. Voodoo curse. Pick your favorite," Scout shrugged.

Wait. Curse. All of them had a sudden wave of realization wash over them at the same time. "Soldier," they all said simultaneously.

Sniper stood up and chugged the rest of his beer. He slammed the bottle on the table and started towards the door. "I swear, I'm gonna strangle the fuckin' drongo right now!" he said angrily. "Why he can't just leave that bloody wizard alone..."

"Sniper, we don't know fer sure that this is Soldier's fault," Engineer pointed out. "It's just speculation at this point."

"No, but he's a bloody damn good start!" Sniper retorted.

Engineer got up and was about to try and stop him from leaving when they heard a clicking sound. They all turned around and watched Bucky squeeze through the now opened window and hop to the floor. His claws, which now seemed much longer and sharper in his dried out paws, clicked on the floor and a wave of dust wafted through the air when he shook off. The undead pointer looked straight at the group and growled. There was a thud behind him when undead bodies started to push their way inside through the open window.

Apparently Bucky still knew his old "you've ignored me when I wanted to come in, so I just let myself in" trick and jimmied the broken lock on the window.

"Uh..." Engineer said at a loss for words.

"Run!" Scout shouted.

He was the first one through the door and down the hall. The volume of zombies in the room quickly grew to an unmanageable amount as they continued to pour in. The others took off behind Scout. Bucky snarled and bolted after them.

"Can I strangle Soldier now?!" Sniper shouted as they raced through the hall.

"Not yet!" Engineer retorted. "Not unless we're _certain_ this is his fault!"

"You just know it is!" Sniper shot back.

"Hmm-hmm!" Pyro shouted at them. Sniper didn't need Engineer's translation to know he had just told them both to shut up.

Scout took a spill when turning the corner. Pumpkin guts still lay strewn in the halls. "Shit, maybe we shoulda cleaned this up..." he said as he stood in pain.

"Or maybe not," Sniper replied. He grabbed Scout and pulled him back to his feet, yanking him along and standing off to the side.

Catching on quickly as to what he was doing, Engineer and Pyro quickly got to the side as well as Bucky rounded the corner. The dog was barely able to slow down and the momentum as well as the slippery pumpkin innards on the floor sent him flying until he fell down the stairs, landing at the bottom with a splat.

"Quick, before he gets back up again!" Sniper instructed.

They ran down the stairs and past the dog, taking off down the hallway while Bucky was still struggling to get back up. Sniper looked over his shoulder and was chilled when he accidentally made eye contact with it.

Bucky stared back at him with an angry and vengeful look in his eyes. It was almost like he blamed Sniper for making him slip and fall down the stairs. What had once been a sweet and friendly dog who liked playing Frisbee and falling asleep on the edge of Engineer's bed was now a creature that was made of pure evil and there was nothing but the will to inflict misery and suffering in the hellhound's eyes. As he stared back at him, Bucky almost seemed to be saying, _"I'll get you for this."_

He turned back around and realized he was in the rear. A sudden burst of adrenaline helped him catch up with the others. As they made their way down the hall, they quickly threw open a door and poured inside, slammed the door shut, and leaned against it before the zombies could catch up and begin pushing on it.

"What are you all doing in here?"

"Oh crap, we're in the spook's room," Sniper grumbled at the instantly recognizable voice.

"Spy, you ain't gonna believe this, but there's frickin zombies out there!" Scout replied.

"You're right. I don't believe you," Spy said skeptically.

"No, he's tellin' the truth. There really are zombies out there!" Engineer stated. Pyro nodded in agreement.

Spy looked from Scout to Engineer with concern. If it had just been Scout claiming the undead were chasing him, he would have just written it off entirely as a bad joke. Engineer on the other hand was a rather intelligent individual, intelligent enough that he had Spy's utmost respect, and he was usually far more inclined to believe him whenever he made a claim. Zombies though were pretty farfetched, and he couldn't help but feel a little skeptical.

"Zombies, you say?" he asked. They nodded. "Like in that stupid movie that Pyro dragged me along to?"

He had sat through the entirety of _Night of the Living Dead_ thinking that everything that was happening was stupid and implausible while Pyro on the other hand spent the next several nights sleeping in Engineer's bed, holding his arm so he couldn't leave him just in case he had another nightmare, his normal routine after watching a scary movie.

"Yep," Engineer agreed.

"Move," Spy said.

The others protested as he reached for the door handle and tried to open it. Instantly Bucky's head shot through the crack in the open door and the hellhound howled and snarled as he tried to force his way in. Spy shoved at the door, trying to keep it closed, and heard moans and snarls coming from down the hallway and growing nearer. Finally Bucky pulled his head back out and the door was shut. Moments later there was a pounding and clawing at the other side of the door as the rest of the undead caught up.

"Was that the dog I backed over in the driveway?" Spy asked.

"Yep. That's mah Bucky," Engineer nodded.

"Alright, I am inclined to believe you now..." Spy said while they backed away from the door.

"Now what?" Scout asked with worry.

"Well it's too dangerous to go back the way we came..." Sniper suggested. "Anyone got any ideas?"

* * *

Sniper flicked Private Paws off his shoulder through the dirt with undead on their tail. Unfortunately there were more on the horizon headed their way.

"Well, at least we made it this far," Engineer stated. "It was a good thing that Pyro had that ham in his pocket so we could use it to attract those bears to fight off the zombies."

"Yeah, it's just unfortunate that we made the last known specimens of the endangered Teufort black bears turn into zombies and caused them to go extinct in the process," Sniper agreed.

"Well at least they're flammable," Scout agreed. "Unfortunately the car was too..."

Pyro shook the detached gas can from his flamethrower sadly when it didn't make the familiar sloshing sound of a full tank of gasoline. "We'll refill it, buddy," Engineer reassured him.

"Gentlemen?" Spy interrupted them.

They looked around and realized that they were surrounded. Scout tagged Spy and shouted, "Not it!" before turning and running the opposite direction.

Pyro fired a flare into the crowd, causing several zombies to erupt into flames. The heat and light attracted the rest of the undead towards the burning few, giving them all a chance to escape the way Scout had gone.

"Pyro, no! Not that way!" Engineer shouted when Pyro panicked and ran back towards the building. He broke off from the rest of the group and chased after him, leaving just Spy and Sniper.

"Great! Where do we go?!" Sniper asked. He realized that he heard no answer and looked around. Spy was nowhere to be found. "Thanks, spook..." he growled under his breath when he realized that he'd just been completely abandoned.

He looked around and saw an open doorway. He decapitated one zombie with his kukri and shoved another aside on the way to the door, slamming it shut behind him. He tried to lock it and started screaming several foreign swear words that he'd picked up from his teammates when he realized that it was broken and didn't latch properly.

Sniper's father had often been fond of the old adage, "When life closes one door, it always opens another". What that adage failed to mention was that the reason the other door was closed in the first place was because there was a horde of flesh eating zombies on the other side of it.

That was what he was facing now as he heard windows smashing and the wet thudding of decomposing matter hitting the ground behind him. He knew the second he stopped pressing on the door, it would swing open and even more undead would come raining in on him from outside, but he had no idea where to go from this point. With zombies coming at him from all sides, he was trapped. Sniper looked over his shoulder and saw several illuminated eyes watching him from the dark shadows at the other end of the room, and all he could think was, _Well fuck._

A door at the top of the stairs swung open. "Sniper!" Scout called to him. "This way!"

Sniper was oddly relieved to hear Scout's voice shouting at him from the top of the stairs. He'd assumed the little wanker had gotten eaten when he didn't hear his mouth flapping for a while. He took a deep breath, prepared to run, and released the door, sprinting up the stairs as it swung hard enough to leave a dent where it collided with the wall.

 _Night of the Living Dead_ lied. Even with their limbs too stiff to run, those damn zombies were still fast enough to keep up. Sniper could see them just a few steps behind him when he and Scout shut and barricaded the door. They both backed away from it. It shook on its hinges as the undead banged on the other side.

"Now what?" he asked Scout.

Scout looked around and felt a sinking feeling when he realized they were trapped. "I don't know," he admitted.

Sniper realized that the only way out would be to jump from the window and hope that there was nothing undead down there to break the fall with its teeth. "The way I see it, there's only one way we can go," he admitted.

"You're not suggesting we..."

Before Scout could finish his sentence, Sniper grabbed him further away from the door, which shuddered in its frame from the sheer force of the zombies pressing on the other side. It wouldn't hold out much longer.

"I am," Sniper replied.

He dragged Scout along for the ride as he bolted towards the window, Scout obviously having no trouble keeping up with his quickened pace, and before he could protest, both of them smashed through the glass and plummeted to the earth below. The force of the impact left Scout somewhat dazed and more than a little dizzy. Sniper felt a sharp pain run straight through his chest and realized that he had landed on a rock. He hoped that he hadn't broken any of his ribs in the fall. Neither of them had much time to recover from their injuries before they realized the others were calling to them.

"Scout!" It was Engineer. "Sniper! Get up!"

Scout instantly regained awareness of his surroundings and the undead that were rapidly converging on their location. Looking for the others, Scout found Engineer and Pyro had already scaled the nearby roof to safety, while Spy was still on the ground, debating whether to run to them or just save himself. The roof. Of course! Why didn't he already think of that himself?

"Sniper, get up!" Scout shouted, shaking Sniper back to reality.

"I'm up," Sniper groaned, clutching his potentially broken rib with one hand as he got up.

"Come on, let's go! They're coming!"

Scout quickly outpaced him in their race to the roof. Jumping up towards the edge with outstretched hands, he just barely missed grabbing onto the roof by an inch, but was thankfully caught by the duel efforts of both Pyro and Engineer. They both worked together to pull him to safety. Thankfully he was the lightest of their teammates, or this would have been a lot more difficult.

"Sniper! Behind you!" Spy shouted in the meanwhile. Figures he'd already decided to make his way onto the roof and abandon him yet again.

Sniper pulled his kukri and spun around, embedding it in the skull of a zombie that had tried to get the jump on him. He pulled it back out of the now re-dead carcass crumpled up in the grass and, still clutching his rib and limping from the fall, tried to make his way back to the roof.

"Oh crap..." Scout said as zombies poured out in front of the building. There was no way in hell Sniper could reach them now.

"Shit!" Sniper exclaimed when they began to cut off his escape.

He stopped his run briefly. He of all people knew how dangerous it was to stand in place for too long like a deer about to be hit by a speeding car, and yet he had no idea where to go from there. He looked about for an alternate escape and thankfully caught sight of a ladder leaning up against an adjacent roof. Right now it was going to be his only bet for survival.

Sniper bolted for the ladder, sidestepping one zombie, killing another with a swing of his kukri, and was nearly there when suddenly a hand shot out and grabbed his leg, tripping him and causing him to fall on the ground, painfully landing on his rib. If there were still any doubts that it was broken before, it was for certain broken now. Sniper could hear the sickening crack from the force of the landing and the pain growing even worse every time he breathed.

"Fuck..." Sniper groaned, aware that the undead were closing in around him.

A gunshot quickly dispatched the errant zombie holding him hostage and instantly he could feel the grip on his leg loosening. Sniper was more than a little surprised to see that it had been Spy that had just saved his life just now. He hadn't time to thank him as he scrambled to get up, temporarily forgetting the pain of his broken rib and practically jumping on the ladder. He scurried up like a rat about to be dragged from a hole by a vicious cat as zombies closed in around him from all sides.

"Sniper! You're almost there!" Scout shouted encouragement after him. Sniper could hear them all frantically shouting at him to hurry and get to safety as he made it to the top. He wished they'd shut up.

The ladder wobbled under him. Sniper quickly grabbed the side of the roof and clung on for dear life as the ladder fell to the side amidst the crowd of ravenous zombies that waited below, reaching for him and biting at the air as they attempted to drag him down and devour him. He thrashed when two of them grabbed him by the legs and pulled, his grip on the roof worryingly loosening.

"Sniper, hurry!" Engineer shouted, as though he wasn't already trying hard enough.

With the very real threat of being dragged down and devoured, Sniper felt a strong burst of fear-fueled adrenaline. He barely heard the gunshots, barely noticed the hands on his legs loosening as the zombies fell to the ground dead beneath him. In an instant, he pulled himself up onto the side of the roof and crawled rapidly away from the edge before collapsing in the middle under his own frantic breathing and fast paced heartbeats.

He didn't get up again.

* * *

 _That noodle incident explaining their escape is because for the longest time there was a gap there since I didn't know how to write that part and I was running out of time to finish, because I have to start writing about Christmas now for a job that's actually paying me. The paid jobs kinda have to take priority over the fun._

 _Also: Yes there is swearing in this chapter and all over this fic in general. Please do not complain about it. I know I put swearing in a fic for a franchise that usually censors their swearing. I'm not going to censor it because it looks weird having an M-rated fic that can't even use a few no-no words._

 _I'm just pointing that out because people complain about me doing that all the time. If that's the biggest complaint you have with my writing, I'd be happy, but it's not really something that I'm concerned about._


	3. Left 4 Dead

_Nicole really did write some of this chapter, but just a little bit._

 _Nicole's Note: To be specific, I was doing some editing and realized that she accidentally deleted half a paragraph in the middle of the chapter somehow, so I re-wrote it for her. I tried to add more, but she vetoed the Scout/Sniper romance scene I added. Maybe it was for the best because I pretty much just plagiarized the first half of Titanic and replaced the second half with the boombox scene from Say Anything._

* * *

Neither Scout nor Pyro moved or looked away. They long gave up trying to call to Sniper when he didn't respond. Isolated on the opposite roof, he was too far away for anyone to check on him and they worried that he might have gone into shock or died. Every once in a while Pyro would anxiously look to Engineer, who would have to reassure him that he was fine, though Engineer secretly worried as well. He hadn't moved for a very long time, close to an hour he calculated. What if he really was dead?

Finally the anxiety washed away when they saw Sniper stirring just across from them, albeit slowly. It was just slight, subtle movement at first, like he woke up too early and was trying to fall back to sleep. Eventually he rolled onto his side and clutched his chest when a sharp pain radiated throughout his entire body. His rib hurt even more now than ever and he was beginning to wonder if he had actually broken more than one. Laying on top of it for about an hour on a hard surface really did nothing to make it feel better.

"Sniper!" Scout shouted over the sound of groaning dead.

"Yeah?" Sniper replied. His voice sounded pained as he slowly tried to sit up.

"Are you alright?"

"Yeah...I think so," he nodded. "I think I might have broken something, though."

Though Spy had been silent the entire time that Sniper was unconscious, he was secretly relieved that he was okay, not that he would ever admit to anyone that he had been worried to begin with. He looked across to the other roof briefly and went back to hastily scribbling something on the back of one of his usual disguises.

The moonlight that he was using to see was blocked by a large shadow. "What are you doin'?" Scout asked as he continued to hover overhead, annoying Spy enough to make him stop briefly to glare at him.

"I'm going to try to sneak past the undead," he replied. "We can't stay up here forever."

Scout looked skeptically at the crude facsimile of a zombie that Spy was drawing. He'd drawn better doodles in five minutes on a napkin. "And you really think that will work?" he questioned.

"Why not? This is how I convinced you that there's a werewolf living in the basement."

"Wait, the werewolf was you?!" Scout asked in disbelief.

Ignoring him, Spy pulled the disguise over his face, checked his revolver to make sure it was loaded, and stood up, walking to the edge of the roof to find the safest place to jump down. "Wish me luck," he said to the others.

"That ain't gonna work, Spy. You're gonna get ate," Scout tried to reason with him.

Continuing to ignore him, Spy jumped down from the roof, landing next to a startled pair of zombies. Everyone leaned over the side, waiting to see if it worked (Sniper secretly hoping that he got eaten, just a little), and most were relieved that the undead were walking right by him, though a few of the zombies gave him confused looks. Spy looked up at Scout with a smug air about him.

"I cannot believe that frickin worked," Scout stated in amazement.

"I will return as soon as possible," Spy replied. Several zombies were now eyeing him suspiciously. "Uh, I mean, braaiiins!" he said before hobbling off in a zombie-like manner. Satisfied, the zombies went back to ignoring him, assuming that he was one of their undead brothers.

* * *

The sun was beginning to peek over the horizon as the morning crept in. Soon the frigid cold of the desert night would be replaced with the scorching heat of the daytime. Engineer laid out on his back watching the stars disappear with the coming dawn while listening to the occasional bang of a nearby gunshot. On the nearby roof, Sniper had decided to try to thin the herd by taking out the zombies one by one with well placed headshots. Sometimes he was able to line them up and take up to three out at once with a single shot. He used his kukri to carve a notch in the roof to keep track of how many he had dispatched this way, but stopped when he began to run out of room for new tallies.

"God, they're like a bloody hydra!" Sniper complained. "Ya kill one and twelve take their place!" He reached into his ammo bag to reload and realized that he had just used the last of his rounds. "Well, I'm out," he announced to the others.

With the sound of a crack of aluminum on leather, Scout hit a baseball into the crowd, successfully knocking the head off of a nearby zombie. "I don't know about you guys, but I'm really bored right now," he sighed. "Where the hell is Spy?"

"Where the hell is everyone else?" Sniper agreed.

A better question was "Are they still alive?" It passed through each of their minds independently that of the nine mercs, the four hiding on the roof were possibly all that was left. Maybe five, if Spy was still alive and looking for help. Heavy, Medic, Soldier, and Demoman were all as of yet unaccounted for.

Engineer looked at Pyro, who had fallen asleep curled up next to him, trusting that the others would look after him while he slept. "At least _he_ looks comfortable," Engineer sighed.

It was already starting to get hot. Scout had since taken off and tied the track jacket he had managed to grab on his way out around his waist and Pyro started to wake up when he was no longer comfortable with the hot sun beating down on him.

"Hope the others are okay," Engineer stated with concern.

"Except for Soldier. He can go to..."

"Sniper!" Engineer scolded.

"Okay, okay fine. Look, I've got an idea," Sniper said. "Someone push Scout off the roof."

"Wait, what?!" Scout said.

"No, hear me out. Give 'em a push, and when they're all converging on one spot to eat him, we'll all run!"

"Sniper! I thought we were friends!" Scout protested.

"We are! But I also kind of have to take a piss right now and I don't have any jars, so..."

"Ah ain't gonna push ya off, Scout," Engineer reassured him. "And Pyro ain't either." Pyro looked a little guilty, like he had been considering it.

"Okay, someone push Engineer off then," Sniper changed tactics.

Fortunately no one had to get pushed off the roof that day. The mob of zombies suddenly erupted into a noisy explosion of flailing limbs and guts. Gibbed zombie parts rained from the sky around the radius of the rocket impact and another one went off just a few moments later. A few grenades exploded and they heard the distinct sound of Sasha mowing down a wall of undead bodies.

"Are you alright up there?" Medic shouted through the chaos.

"Ah'm fine," Engineer replied. "Sniper broke a rib."

"This is what you undead bastards get for trying to eat my raccoons!" Soldier shouted before he went flying through the crowd screaming and smashing heads in with a shovel.

The mob of zombies was significantly thinned by their efforts, leaving only a few remaining, some of them opting to run from them instead of towards them after seeing the huge mess that was once another zombie.

The sound of a revolver echoed through the area and Spy stepped around the corpse that fell only a moment after. "I told you I would be back with help," he said while the others started to climb down.

Sniper dropped from the roof and clamped an arm over his chest when pain shot through it from the impact. "What took you so long?!" he demanded.

"I said I would be back as soon as possible. This _is_ as soon as possible," Spy pointed out.

"We had a hard time waking up Demo," Medic answered with a smile. "Does this hurt?" He pushed as hard as possible against Sniper's broken rib and seemed to be pleased when he screamed and pushed him away. "Oh, ja! That's broken!"

"Wait, you had to wake him?" Scout looked at Demoman, who was already leaning against a broken fence and chugging scrumpy. "You slept through all of this?"

Spy had found him asleep in a closet, where he would have gone unnoticed if zombies weren't actively trying to get in after him. He then proceeded to drag him to the showers, turned on the cold water, and watched as Demo proceeded to wrap himself in a discarded towel and go back to sleep. He then tried making as much noise as possible. All that did was attract more zombies. He put on some really strong coffee, hoping the smell might work. Medic and Heavy found them instead because Medic had been up all night and the smell of coffee had been inviting. They then tried to take the bottle of alcohol from him, which caused Demo to promptly wake up and threaten to cut them.

They ran into Soldier a few minutes later, surrounded by his raccoons and using his shovel to beat a bloody paste into the floor that had once been a zombie that had picked up and tried to eat Lieutenant Bites. Apparently he had no idea there were zombies and thought the guy just had really odd tastes.

"And that's what took you all morning?" Scout asked.

"No, afterwards we left to get food before we came to save you," Medic replied.

"You...left to get food?"

"I've been up all night. I was hungry," he shrugged.

"Restaurant lied," Heavy added. "Was told it was fast food..."

"You..." Sniper said, pointing at Soldier. "I need to speak with you, now!"

"Easy, Sniper. We still don't know if he's involved," Engineer said to try and keep the peace.

"Don't give me that shit, Engineer, you know damn well this is his fault!"

Soldier stared, obviously confused, Lieutenant Bites sitting on his shoulder with his tail wrapped around the back of his head like a content cat. "I have no idea what you are talking about," he said sincerely.

"Really? When you went to see Merasmus?" Sniper began. "Did you do something to upset him by any chance?"

Soldier looked like he genuinely had to think long and hard about it. "Well...I don't think he liked my housewarming gift all that much..."

"Soldier," Heavy said with a strong air of suspicion about him, "what did you do?"

"It was a grenade!" Soldier replied like this was a normal thing to just gift someone. "But then when I went to show him that it was real, he accidentally killed John Wayne with it."

"You killed John Wayne?!" Engineer stated in distress.

"Now can I kill him?" Sniper asked.

Engineer seemed to be in tears. "Yeah...yeah, go ahead!"

"Gentlemen, no one is going to kill each other!" Spy quickly intervened. "We have the zombies for that!"

"Good idea, I'll just push him into a crowd of zombies!" Sniper replied.

"Mmph!" Pyro interrupted. "Mmph-hmm-phm-hm-uhm-hm, mph-hm-a-mm!" he said in a scolding tone.

"Uh, I'm sorry, but...what?" Sniper asked.

"Pyro, this may come as a shock to you, but I speak eight languages and mumbling is not one of them!" Spy pointed out.

"He says that we should go find Merasmus and ask him to get rid of the zombies," Engineer translated. "He also says he's been on the roof for a while and now he really has to go to the bathroom." Pyro nodded.

"I like that idea! I can bring him my apology gift for the housewarming gift!" Soldier said cheerfully. He held up a haphazardly wrapped package that had a sticker on it reading, _Warning: Radioactive! May cause unsightly tumors!_

"This trip can only end well," Sniper groaned. He shrieked again when Medic grabbed his broken ribs again.

"Ja! Still broken!" he stated his prognosis cheerfully.

* * *

They were only two miles from the only road that led out of Teufort before they encountered their first problem. The numerous zombies on the road were swarming a bus where several survivors had taken refuge. Driving around them required going across an old woman's lawn, and she did not let the impending zombie apocalypse stop her from going outside and yelling at them for tearing up the grass. They finally made it past her and were stopped about two miles in by a massive police barricade.

"What the hell?" Sniper said as he stopped the vehicle.

"Ah didn't even know the Teufort PD was that big!" Engineer said in awe of the sheer amount of vehicles in the blockade.

"What's wrong? I can't see!" Scout shouted from the backseat. Pyro shoved him back down in order to make room for him to lean over the back of the seat to see better.

"Entire road's blocked off, mate," he pointed out. "Gimme a moment. Stay in the car." He said this more to Pyro than to Scout or Engineer. He knew him all too well.

Medic and Spy had already gotten out of the other car and were screaming at an officer in riot gear, who was readily arguing back.

Sniper approached the passenger side of their vehicle and leaned against the door. "So what exactly is happening?" he asked the remaining passengers.

"No one is allowed to leave," Heavy replied.

"Mayor's orders," Demoman added distastefully from the backseat. He rolled his eye like it was the stupidest thing he'd ever heard.

"Look, he thinks he's people!" Soldier said with amusement. Lieutenant Bites was sitting upright like a person and had been buckled into Spy's seat.

The Mayor himself overheard the commotion from nearby and made his way over with a pair of armed guards, who seemed to be around as much to keep angry citizens away from him as they were to protect him from zombies.

"Oh hi! How are you gentlemen doing this evening? I hope you can all make it to the annual Teufort Pumpkin Festival next week!" he said as he greeted them. "Some of the pumpkins went missing, though, so it's first come, first serve!"

"Listen, we need to get out of here, and it's imperative that we do it now," Sniper interrupted his spiel. "So I suggest you move those cars and let us through!"

"Uh oh, somebody is not a happy camper!" the Mayor replied. "I'm sorry, but the barricades around Teufort are in place to keep it safe from the impending zombie invasion!"

"That makes zero sense!" Spy pointed out. "How is it protecting us from zombies when the zombies are already here?!"

"Well Mr. Grumpypants, clearly the barricades are protecting us by making sure no more zombies get in!" he responded. "Now I suggest you all go commune in one of our many popular tourist spots and wait for this all to blow over!" One of the guards cocked his shotgun, indicating that this wasn't a request so much as a demand. "Oh, and don't try to go around the barricades. They should have finished erecting the walls around Teufort about fifteen minutes ago!"

They walked back to their waiting teammates grumbling the entire way. "Great, how do we get out now?" Medic asked.

"I don't know what I'm gonna do, Martin. Things are getting bad. I have to get the kids out of Teufort somehow," a nearby cop said.

"Well you can always just use that secret passage back at the station," Martin replied.

"Yeah, but that's just a rumor. Have you ever even seen it?"

"No, but I know a guy who knows a guy who knows a guy's sister who dated a guy that says it's there."

The three of them looked at each other to make sure that they'd all overheard the same thing. "Are you thinkin' what I'm thinkin'?" Sniper asked.

"Probably not, but I think I know what you're thinking," Medic replied.

* * *

 _Medic was thinking that some of the organs in his coolers were about to go bad, if you wanted to know what he was thinking._


	4. Resident Fortress

_Nicole's Note: Thank god, my roommate isn't in the room right now. Please, she's keeping me hostage down here! Call for help! The only thing she lets me eat are the rats that share the basement with me! Oh crap, I can hear her returning from the bathroom! TELL MY MOM I LOVE HER!_

 _Banana: Dammit Nicole, I leave the room for only half a minute to pee and already you're telling people I keep you locked in the basement!_

* * *

The Teufort Police Station stood completely deserted within. Most of the on-duty officers were currently out at the barricade, leaving behind a lobby strewn with police reports, room temperature coffee, and half eaten donuts. They looked around, noting that the lobby itself was about the size of the foyer of a mansion, which was rather large for a police department serving such a small population like Teufort.

A man who had a mustache that looked like a woolly bear caterpillar had taken residence on his face sat upright behind the front desk when he heard the door shut, the badge clipped to his uniform shirt identifying him as Chief Ryan. He didn't look all that surprised to see the Teufort Nine standing there.

"Oh! Visitors! You've come to file a missing persons report too, eh?"

"Missing persons?" Spy asked.

"Yes! We've been having missing persons reports filed left and right since last night, don't cha know?"

"Hm. Probably all of them were eaten by zombies," Medic shrugged nonchalantly.

"Zombies? Why do people always come in here talking aboot zombies?" the chief said. "It's probably just some of them hippies, hopped up on that mary-jew-anna stuff I've been hearing about lately. This will all blow over in a week or two, don't cha know?"

"Right..." Sniper replied. "Listen, we need a way out of Teufort, but the mayor's got us all barricaded off. You're the police, so maybe you know a way out?"

"Hmm...barricaded off from the world, you say?" Chief Ryan replied thoughtfully. "I always knew this day would come. And they all laughed at me when I had a secret escape tunnel built into my office!"

"So you _do_ have a way out!" Engineer said with relief.

"I do. Follow me."

He led them to his office all the way at the back of the gargantuan police station. The room was full of bookshelves laden with detective novels and police manuals and creepy taxidermy animals. Soldier was looking at a stuffed raccoon posed to look like it was fishing in horror and had a hand clamped over Lieutenant Bites' eyes.

Reaching under his desk, the chief hit a button which moved one of the bookshelves aside, revealing...yet another door. "Ta da!" Chief Ryan said as he presented them with the locked door.

"That's great...now how about you unlock it for us?" Scout requested.

"Hmm...that's the thing. It requires five keys to unlock it and I only have one, don't cha know?" Chief Ryan reached into his pocket and pulled out a yellow key, unlocking one of the tumbler locks with it. "If you want to get oot, you'll have to find the four other keys, don't cha know?"

Spy looked at him in confusion. "Wait, what? You have an emergency door, which I might remind you is intended as a quick escape for emergencies, and you need five keys to unlock it, which you hid in five different locations? What kind of an idiot thinks this emergency plan is a good idea?!"

"That sounds like a great idea! Why don't we have an emergency plan like that?" Soldier asked.

"Exhibit A..."

"So, where are these other keys then?" Demoman asked.

"Hidden in various strategic locations aboot the city, don't cha know?" Chief Ryan replied.

"What? You mean we have to go back out there to find them?" Sniper asked. He indicated his empty sniper rifle. "Can you at least give us some bullets? A spare gun maybe?"

"Oh, we don't have any of that around here," the chief shook his head. "We here at the TPD don't believe in using that kind of lethal force, don't cha know?"

"You don't believe in guns?" Spy asked. "You're the police!"

"Oh, but I can give you some of these!" he said. He reached under the desk and brought out a box, overturning it so that a bunch of walkie talkies spilled out of it. "Maybe you can throw them at 'em, eh?"

"Can you just tell us where the bloody keys are so we can get them and go?" Sniper sighed.

* * *

Chief Ryan made them a map indicating where the other four keys were located. They decided it would be faster to just go in pairs and find them all at once. Each pair would take one of the police two-ways, which were all tuned to the same frequency so that they could keep in touch. While they all debated who should stick with who, Engineer busied himself by setting up one of his sentries in the middle of the lobby, aiming it at the front door and programming it to target any invading zombies.

The first key was in the station somewhere. Chief Ryan had absolutely no idea where, but he had a very good feeling that it was in a box and that box was probably either blue or green. Or gold. Or maybe even magenta. In fact, maybe it wasn't even in a box at all. Maybe there was a statue involved?

"Great. This place is a mansion!" Medic grumbled as he and Heavy went off to search the station for it.

The second one was at a well known liquor store down the street.

"Call it!" Demoman exclaimed. No one had a chance to argue with him before he and Soldier both raced off out the front door after it, the raccoon dangling off of the sleeve of Soldier's coat.

The third missing key was at a donut shop favored by the TPD.

"Who chose the hiding places for these keys?" Spy questioned.

"We needed to think of a place where no one would think to look for them, don't cha know?" Chief Ryan replied.

"Yes. Because no one would ever think the police would hide something at a donut shop," he replied sardonically before heading off to find it.

"Bet I can beat you there, bitch!" Scout shouted as he ran past him and bolted off down the street.

"Scout, wait!" Spy shouted as he followed after him. "One of these days I'm going to break both his legs so he can't run off anymore..."

"And the last one is at my house, don't cha know!" the chief said. He pushed a map across the desk towards Sniper. "It's this one right here! It's a bit far to walk though, so you can borrow my car!"

Sniper looked at the large red circle on the map. The address was written on the side with the same bright red marker. He looked up from the map and watched Engineer move on from his sentry to board up the windows.

"I take it you're not coming?" Sniper replied.

"Sorry. Have to make sure this place ain't overrun without you guys here to protect it," Engineer apologized.

Sniper looked at Pyro and sighed when he realized that he was now stuck with the leftovers. He was already pretty against the thought of having to go out to the police chief's house with two broken ribs. Whatever Medic had done had done little to help with the pain and the idea of having to go out with two broken ribs and Pyro tagging along was even worse. He wondered if he could trade him for Heavy instead, but he knew asking would likely hurt Pyro's feelings, and Medic would probably retaliate if he tried to take him.

Pyro seemed eager to follow, though he gave Engineer one last longing glance as though he were about to board a train to another country and never see him again rather than simply run out to pick up a key. It suddenly occurred to Sniper that he hadn't seen Pyro and Engineer separated for a while now. The separation must have been miserable for Pyro, who didn't have many, if any, friends outside of the other mercenaries, and was closest to Engineer.

"Come back safe, Pyro," Engineer said, clapping a hand on Pyro's shoulder. Pyro nodded and followed Sniper out the door. Engineer waited until he was gone to return to adding wooden boards to the windows with a power drill.

* * *

A bell on the door jingled as Demoman pushed it open. He and Soldier looked around and quickly determined that there was no one there. "If it's not okay fer me to jus' take this, just say no!" Demo shouted into the back as he grabbed a bottle off a shelf. "No protests. Grab as much as ya can!" he said to Soldier.

Engineer's voice crackled over the radio. _"Did anyone reach their destination yet?"_ he asked.

" _Non,"_ Spy's voice replied. _"I'm still trying to catch up with Speedy Gonzales."_

" _Still on the road,"_ Sniper added.

"Aye, we're here," Demoman replied. "Does anyone want anything while we're here?"

There was a pause before Medic's voice crackled through the speaker. _"Grab a case of German beer while you're there. None of that American Scheiße!"_

" _Hey, ah actually like that 'American shit'!"_ Engineer protested.

"If I were a key, where would I be?" Soldier asked.

He tried to leap over the counter in an awesome action movie-ish way, but ended up falling over onto the floor. He looked up to see if Demoman had seen that and was relieved that he was looking the other way.

"Key's not over here," Demoman said, though it was seriously debatable if he was really looking all that hard.

"Not here either," Soldier determined upon fishing around under the counter. There was nothing of use under there at all, just a bottle of painkillers, an adrenaline pen, a shotgun, and a box of shells. He turned around and suddenly saw it, a pink key with a key chain that looked like a bottle of J _ä_ ger dangling from Lieutenant Bites' mouth. "We found it!" he shouted.

"Where?!" Demoman popped up practically out of nowhere on the other side of the counter, several liquor bottles in his arms.

"Right there!" Soldier pointed out the key.

"Oh...the key. Ah thought you found where they hid the Kahlua..."

There was a sudden banging on the front door. They both spun around and found that zombies were beginning to swarm the store. "Dear god, they're everywhere!" Soldier said in alarm. "Get behind me, Lieutenant Bites!"

"PROTECT THE BOOZE!" Demoman shouted before charging at them, grenade launcher locked and loaded.

* * *

The donut shop was several blocks from the police station in the opposite direction of the liquor store. The lights were off inside, leaving the interior lit only as far as the sunlight could penetrate. Scout held his face up to the window and peeked in.

"Are they open?" he asked.

"Guess not," Spy replied. The zombies that appeared last night must have put a damper on their usual schedule.

Scout reached for the handle and was surprised when he pulled the door open with just a slight tug. An earsplitting burglar alarm went off, the sound reverberating through the empty streets. Scout quickly slammed it shut again and looked back at Spy with a guilty expression.

"Someone's getting fired..." he stated of the unlocked front door.

They both heard a thousand shrieks echoing through the streets and looked around, trying to pinpoint the source of the sound only to realize that there were several coming from several different directions.

"I think we need to get that key and leave," Spy said frantically. He pulled the door open and shoved Scout inside, following in after and shutting the door.

Scout immediately began trashing the place in his search while Spy jammed a mop through the handles of the door to keep them from being opened. Crawling out from hiding places under cars, emerging from dark allies, and charging up the street were hundreds of zombies, all in varying stages of decomposition. The wooden handle of the mop would not hold long and Spy was suddenly very aware of the fragility of glass windows.

"Did you find it?" he asked over his shoulder.

"No! Help me!" Scout shouted over the screech of the alarm.

They both tore through the donut shop, checking for a hidden nail on the wall, a place where it might be hidden under a table, anything, but the key was nowhere to be found. Suddenly Scout had an epiphany.

"Spy, help me get the register open!" he said before hopping behind the cash register.

"Scout, this is no time to start robbing the place!" he retorted.

"No, I mean the key might be in there!" When Spy hesitated a little longer than he would have liked, he quickly explained. "When I was 16 I had a summer job, and we hid spare keys in the registers all the time!"

Spy jumped when the sound of pounding on the glass behind him caught him by surprise. He looked at the zombies banging on the windows and noticed that a few hairline cracks were already appearing in the glass.

"Alright, move!" He shoved Scout aside and pulled a lockpick out of his jacket, which he used to jimmy the register open. After a moment there was a click and the register drawer rolled open. They dug through a few loose screws, paperclips, and a pen, and found an orange key at the very bottom. "Scout, for once you actually did something right!"

"What do you mean 'for once'?"

Shards of shattered glass sprayed the floors as arms jutted through the windows and reached for them. "Scout, to the back!" Spy ordered. He didn't have to order him twice. Scout was already at the backdoor by the time Spy even managed to turn around.

They hoped for a quick getaway through the back alley. They almost made it to the end before Scout pointed straight ahead and shouted, "Walkers!"

Emerging from the emergency side exit of the Early Risers Retirement Home next door to the donut shop was a barrage of geriatric zombies moving with the assistance of walking frames, all of them converging on their location and cutting off their escape. Spy grabbed Scout by the arm and dragged him back, turning him around and pushing him towards the other end of the alley.

"Go!" he shouted over the sounds of moaning.

"Spy, it's a dead end!" Scout pointed out.

"Get onto the dumpster! We can climb onto the roof from there!"

Climbing onto a smelly dumpster was not exactly Spy's preferred afternoon activity, but getting eaten alive wasn't either, so it was an even trade off. Scout pulled his handgun and fired a few rounds off into the heads of any undead that got too close to climbing up with them.

"Scout, get up there!" Spy ordered him.

"Are you mad? Not without you!" Scout retorted.

"I'm going up after you, now get the hell up there!"

Scout did not look so eager to abandon Spy, but he had made it clear that he wanted him to climb up first. Maybe it was because he knew that Scout was better at jumping and thus hoped he'd be up there to pull him up or maybe he just wanted to make sure that Scout was safe before he saved himself, in which case he found that kind of weird that Spy would care that much.

He leapt up, catching the edge of the roof and using both the gutter and side of the building as leverage to climb. He didn't realize how high up it was until he was actually up there and he suddenly realized that there was no way in Hell that Spy would be able to make that jump. Somehow he knew that Spy had already figured that out long before him.

"Spy! I'm up!" he shouted down to him once he'd made it. "Give me your hand!" Maybe, just maybe, he might be able to make it after all.

"And so you are," Spy replied. "You have the key. Get back to the police station!"

"What? I already told you, I'm not goin' anywhere without you!"

"Scout, this is no time to argue! Get up there before..."

The sheer force of the alarming number of zombies pressing forward shoved the heavy dumpster backwards in a surprisingly abrupt manner. Spy lost his balance and fell into the crowd, quickly disappearing under the mass of walkers and grabbing hands.

"SPY!" Scout shouted as he watched him swiftly get engulfed by the horde. He fired shots into the heads of any zombie nearby where Spy had fallen, but did so with the worry that he might hit him. "SPY! WHERE ARE YOU?!"

* * *

 _Will Spy make it, or has he already been messily killed off by walkers? Will he survive only to be captured by the Classic team and be bludgeoned to death in front of his teammates with a bat? How many episodes of The Walking Dead can I watch in a row before the sleep deprivation makes me pass out? How many licks does it take to get to the center of a Tootsie Pop? Why do people like minions so much? For the answer to these frustratingly unresolved cliffhangers, rage online with your fellow fans for several weeks on end and then tune in a year later to find out!_

 _What the hell is that accent that Chief Ryan is speaking in, you ask? Originally I was trying to channel Pickles the Drummer from Metalocalypse, but somewhere down the line he became some sort of Canadian...I suck at writing accents, is what I'm saying._


	5. Look At the Flowers

_This is the chapter that Nicole helped write, because she is the world's biggest Resident Evil fan (she even likes Resident Evil 6, and that game sucks!) and wanted to help write a parody scene based on it. Notice I partnered Scout with Spy instead of Sniper on the previous chapter for a reason._

 _Nicole's Note: That reason is she doesn't love me enough to give me creative freedom over our fic._

 _Banana: Nicole, you plagiarized Titanic!_

* * *

"Alright, so where does this key reside?" Medic asked Chief Ryan. The chief stared off into the distance for a good long while. Medic began to wonder if he was even listening to a word that he had just said.

"Well?" Heavy asked, noticing Medic's growing impatience.

"Hold on, I'm thinking..." the chief replied. "I think there's somethin' about a statue, eh? You have to push it or something. Look for a statue. Maybe the key's in there."

 _That's a weird damn place to hide a key,_ Medic thought to himself. He and Heavy searched high and low through both floors of the police station looking for anything that remotely resembled a statue. Finally they found a creepy looking one that resembled some kind of modern art just sitting in the middle of the room. There was a discolored panel on the floor nearby.

"Let me be guessing," Heavy said. "We have to push it there."

"Well, only one way to find out," Medic shrugged.

He pushed the statue but it was a lot heavier than it looked and only budged a little at a time. He nearly fell over when it lurched forward and realized that Heavy was helping him. There was a click to indicate that they had moved it onto the discolored spot, which turned out to be a pressure plate of some sort. A hidden compartment opened on the front of the statue.

"Maybe we found it?" Heavy said hopefully.

Medic reached inside and withdrew a blue rock. It was just an ordinary rock that someone had literally painted blue. The word "vase" was scribbled on the underside in permanent marker. Well, at least the statue was good for providing a surface to bang one's head against.

"On second thought, maybe not," Heavy stated while he watched Medic do just that.

* * *

Scout pulled the trigger and heard an empty click as the handgun came up empty. "Dammit..." he swore to himself.

He scanned the crowd for any sign of Spy, a flash of a red suit, something, anything that would indicate that he hadn't been eaten. The crowd was so thick with undead that he couldn't tell if that flash of red liquid was fresh or the coagulated blood of a zombie. He paced along the roof as he tried not to panic and think of how to proceed. He glanced back at the dumpster and saw that there were several hungry eyes now following his movement, arms reaching up towards him. They knew he was there, and he had their full attention. He suddenly had a plan.

He holstered the empty handgun and tapped the end of his bat against the side of the roof. The sound got the attention of several zombies and they began to press up against the wall, hands reaching up and grasping at the air, their desire to rip him apart and eat him evident by the way they bit at the air.

Scout ran back to the edge of the roof by the dumpster. There was only a handful of zombies trudging along slowly on the opposite side of the chain link fence that separated the alley from an open field, since the fence ran the entire perimeter of the field to keep out intruders successfully kept most of the zombies out as well. He jumped down and immediately swung his bat, caving in the skull of the nearest zombie, and moved onto the others. He ran towards the front of the building, the chain link safely cutting him off from the huge crowd that had been drawn by the alarm, which had since gone silent. The fence wouldn't hold for long, but at least it provided a temporary buffer from the undead.

"Hey!" he shouted to the ravenous undead. "Follow me, dumbasses!"

Scout ran down the field, dragging his bat along the chain link. All zombies within hearing range started to follow along with outstretched arms, some of them already pressing on the sides of the fence in an attempt to break it down and get him. This was working, but it wasn't loud enough.

Scout recalled the alarm and how it had drawn the undead. He searched the field until he found a small rock, smaller, but about the same weight of a baseball. He backed up until he could see over the crowd of zombies and saw a storefront, the lights just as darkened as the donut shop had been.

He found the spot in the grass where he felt his aim would be best and threw the rock into the air, swinging at it with his bat. He missed. It wasn't quite his fault since the rock wasn't exactly a baseball and the smaller size made it easier to hit, but luckily no one was around to see the embarrassing swing. He retrieved it from the grass and tossed it into the air again, swinging, and watching go straight and bounce off the chain link.

"Son of a bitch..." Scout mumbled.

He tried again. The rock this time struck and bounced off a portly zombie. In a furious rage, Scout grabbed another rock and threw it towards the crowd and was surprised to hear the shattering of glass and the loud screech of an alarm. The sound was drowned out by the deafening howl of the crowd of undead as they all converged on the shop.

That worked. He'd just have to keep to the rooftops, break a few windows here and there, and hope that the sound led the horde away from Spy.

* * *

After Chief Ryan took one look at the rock, he gave a shrug. "Don't know what that's for, don't cha know?" he told Medic.

"No, I don't know. That's why I'm asking you!" He and Heavy stared at the rock for the longest time trying to figure out what it meant. The only clue they had to go on was the word "vase".

"Oh! I know!" Chief Ryan suddenly said. "There's a vase in the main office, don't cha know?"

They both made their way to the main office and sure enough, there was a bright blue vase that matched the color of the rock. The problem now was that they didn't know what to do with it from there.

"Maybe we smash it?" Heavy suggested.

"That sounds too simple. Maybe we put the rock inside it," Medic replied.

He dropped the rock inside the vase, thinking that it sounded like a stupid enough idea to work, and sure enough he heard a similar click to the one when the statue was moved. They both waited eagerly as another panel underneath it opened to reveal a key...

...with a tag on it that said _"Box, room B4"_.

"Can I have that rock back?" Medic asked no one in particular. "I feel as though I need to bang my head again."

* * *

It was already well after noon by the time Pyro and Sniper pulled up onto the front lawn. The house was at the top of a steep incline, which Sniper realized when he started to get out without putting the parking break on. Luckily Pyro jumped across the seat and put it on before the vehicle could gain any momentum.

"We're at the house," Sniper said into the police radio.

He and Pyro got out and examined the house. It was a rather small building, one story tall, painted light blue and had a cat shaped mailbox out front. Hopefully it wouldn't take them that long to find it. As they approached the front door, Sniper searched the key ring for the key to the house. He tried all of them, the last one of course being the only one that actually fit the lock. They both left the door wide open as they walked in, just in case they needed a quick escape.

The front door opened into a hallway right next to the kitchen. The first thing Sniper noticed was that it smelled strongly of cats. He looked around distastefully but didn't see any sign of them anywhere. He may have loved a lot of animals, but he detested cats. They seemed like little assholes who thought they owned you instead of the other way around, and they had no practical purpose that he could find, other than maybe causing small scale extinction events of tiny critters in the backyard. A dog could at least be taught to hunt, guard, or herd sheep.

"Alright, let's search for this key and get out of here," Sniper instructed his companion. Pyro nodded and started searching through drawers in the kitchen.

When Sniper asked the chief where the key was, the chief had replied, "Oh, I dunno. On a hook or in a drawer somewhere." This didn't narrow it down as much as the man thought it had narrowed it down. The house had more drawers than tables and Sniper had yet to find a single hook on the wall. Pyro was making the search a little more difficult by trashing the place as he searched, pulling drawers out and overturning them on the floor, throwing around magazines and old newspapers, and twice pushed a cabinet shut while Sniper was trying to search through it.

The whole time they were searching, Sniper couldn't help but notice that he could now smell a strong smell of gasoline that was quickly overpowering the cat smell. He looked at Pyro, but the firebug wasn't currently playing with anything flammable at the moment. It seemed to be blowing in through the back door with the breeze.

Pyro shoved him aside when Sniper stood in between him and a closet. Sniper was about ready to shout at him when he started to screech excitedly and emerged holding a green key. "You found it!" Sniper said with relief.

Pyro's head suddenly snapped to the open front door. Sniper followed where he was looking. There, standing in the doorway, dripping of wet decomposition and with four jagged claw marks the size of those from a Teufort black bear now marring the tire tracked body, was an animal that Sniper had hoped he'd never run into again. Bucky had found them.

"Pyro," Sniper whispered. "Run to the back of the house and open the door, then make your way back to the car." Pyro nodded, but Sniper worried that he'd be frozen in fear when it actually came time to run. "Go..."

"Hmm?" Pyro replied.

"Go!" Sniper shoved him along and they both bolted for the back door.

Pyro ran into it and barely had it open before Bucky cleared the living room. To their surprise, the dog slid across the floor on some magazines that Pyro had thrown about while searching for the key and went flying out the door.

"Change of plans. Just run to the car!" Sniper ordered.

They both bolted back to the front of the house and out to the car. Thankfully they had left the doors unlocked because they never would have made it inside in time otherwise. No sooner did they slam the doors shut when Bucky leapt up onto the hood of the vehicle and snarled and barked at them from the other side of the glass. The windshield thankfully held up as the hellhound clawed at it.

Bucky was busy biting at and tearing off the immobile windshield wipers from the front of the car while Sniper fumbled through his pockets looking for the keys. He was beginning to fear that he dropped them when he suddenly remembered that he had left them in the ignition in case a quick getaway was needed. He turned the key and heard the engine rev and then die. Trying it again the engine once again refused to start. Suddenly he realized why he had smelled gas earlier.

"The bloody mutt chewed through the petrol line!" he said in shock. How did it know to do that? It was just a zombie! Zombies didn't think!

The dog leapt off the hood of the car and disappeared somewhere. Pyro looked around, scared that he couldn't see it. He jumped over onto Sniper's side, involuntarily whacking his broken ribs with his arm as he did so, when Bucky suddenly appeared on his side of the car. The hellhound barked and snarled as it clawed at the window.

Pyro backed off when he realized the pain that Sniper was in. Bucky once again jumped up onto the hood of the car and walked to Sniper's side. He stared straight through the glass at the Aussie in the driver's seat and snarled, foam and strings of drool dripping from his jaws.

"Pyro," Sniper said with a sinking feeling in his stomach. "You didn't happen to grab the radio off the table on the way out, did you?"

"Mm-mm," Pyro shook his head.

Sniper awkwardly looked through the scope of his rifle in the enclosed space towards the open door. Sitting in the center of the kitchen table was the walkie talkie and the note that read, _"Pyro: Don't forget to remind me to grab the radio on the way out."_

Sniper changed his mind. He liked cats now. Cats were amazing. Dogs were shit.

* * *

Room B4 was down in the basement. There were two boxes down there, the key only unlocking one of them. Inside the box was a key that said _"Interrogation Room"_. Heavy and Medic ran to the Interrogation Room on the first floor and found a colored star shaped wooden block and a memo on the table that had an overly complicated riddle about colors and shapes. After being stumped for about a half hour on what it could mean, they remembered seeing a bunch of other wooden blocks in varying colors and shapes somewhere on the second floor. After finding that room again, they had to solve an overly complicated puzzle using the overly complicated riddle with the blocks and got a key with a tag on it reading _"Second Box, Room B4"_.They then ran all the way back downstairs to the basement to unlock the second box. Within that box was a scrap of paper that read _"Roof"_. They ran to the roof and walked past a message scribbled on the wall in a hidden area twice before Engineer, who was setting up a sentry up there, saw it and pointed it out to them. The note instructed them to go back down to the room with the statue, and finally they found a blue key taped to the top of the secret compartment that initially hid the rock.

Medic ended up running back up to the roof just so that he could fall to his knees and shout into the heavens, "WHY WAS THIS SO NEEDLESSLY COMPLICATED?! I JUST WANT TO OPEN A DOOR!"

"There, there, Doktor," Heavy said as he patted Medic's shoulder. "I can go get rock if you want?"

"Can ya keep it down, Doc? Yer gonna attract more of 'em!" Engineer shouted from the other side of the roof.

* * *

If it weren't for the heavy breathing amplified significantly by the filters of his gas mask, Sniper would have assumed that Pyro had died of heat exhaustion an hour ago. Pyro was motionless in the seat beside him, his head drooping off to the side, droplets of what were probably sweat dripping out through the filters like drool. He barely reacted enough to swat a hand away when Sniper reached for the clasps of his mask. For someone who dealt with heat on a constant basis, Pyro seemed barely able to handle it himself.

"Ya know, you might be able to breathe better if you take it off," Sniper pointed out.

He himself was feeling the effects of the intense New Mexican heat that flooded the enclosed car. He had rolled down all of the windows just a crack, but didn't dare lower them any more than that for fear of allowing Bucky inside after them. The undead dog was still on the hood of the car, laying down on his side, appearing to be asleep, though the lidless, glowing eyes stared directly at Sniper the entire time, giving the impression that it wasn't asleep and was watching them both the entire time.

"Why are you so bloody damn pissed off at me for?" Sniper asked the dog as though expecting an answer. "I'm not the one who ran you over with a fuckin' car!"

Pyro shook his head weakly and halfheartedly pushed Sniper's hand away again. If he really wanted to, Sniper was certain that Pyro would be too weak to fight him off if he tried to forcibly remove his mask, but he felt too hot and his ribcage was in too much pain for him to want to fight with Pyro right now.

"I'm not going to tell anyone what you look like if that's what you're worried about," he attempted to reason with him instead. Pyro once more shook his head in refusal. He really was a stubborn little prick when he wanted to be.

Sniper wasn't sure how much longer either of them could withstand the heat of the car, and he was certain Pyro would die of heatstroke long before he did in that suit of his. He wasn't sure which idea was more terrifying, being trapped in a car with his friend's body while a zombie dog clawed at the door outside, or knowing that he would be dying alone in a car while a zombie dog clawed at the door outside. He'd have to act fast if he didn't want to lose Pyro.

He heard a metallic clink and looked at Pyro just in time to see him flip the lid of his lighter shut. Pyro once again flipped it open and shut again. "Pyro, please don't light that. We're sittin' on top of spilled petrol, the fumes might catch," Sniper requested.

Then it hit him.

He looked at the dog, who currently was gnawing on his leg and thought up a plan. The pros of the plan were if all went well, they'd be out of the hot car and away from the hellish beast that was assailing them. The cons would be that the plan required getting out of the car and putting themselves in danger of getting mauled. With Pyro fading fast, he decided that the pros outweighed the cons in this situation and he looked at Pyro beside him.

"Okay, Pyro. I'm gonna get us out of here. This is what I want you to do," he said. Pyro still didn't move aside from the flicking of the lighter to calm his nerves and his raspy breathing was beginning to sound painful. "I'm going to get out of the car." This time Pyro's head slowly turned to look at him in what he assumed was some form of shock. The sweat and spit dripping from his filters were beginning to collect and foam, making him look just as much like a rabid dog as the real one outside on the hood. "While I distract the dog, I want you to get out and shut your door as quietly as possible, and stay hidden! Got that?" Pyro whimpered and shook his head. "Just listen a moment. We've only got one shot at this."

* * *

"We have returned with the beer!" Soldier shouted loudly when he and Demoman burst through the door carrying several cases. One of Engineer's sentries could be heard firing off a few rounds outside, a second one joining it a moment later before they both grew silent.

"What took you so long?" Medic asked nonchalantly. "You've been gone almost an hour!"

"We thought the liquor store was being attacked by a swarm, but it turned out they were all still alive," Soldier replied.

"They were just _really_ high," Demoman added.

"It took you that long to notice?" Medic asked.

"Yes!" Soldier replied. "So if anyone asks you who murdered those people with a rocket, do not tell them it was me!"

Demo watched Engineer walk by in a panic, a radio in hand. "Is there something wrong with Engie?" he asked with concern.

"Pyro and Sniper have not made call in a while," Heavy answered. "He is beginning to worry."

"Is it only them that are missing?"

"Well..."

The door smashed open and Scout took a moment to catch his breath. He clearly had run quite far at this point. "Please tell me Spy's called one of you guys?" Not one of them said anything. "Guys? Really? Tell me one of you has heard from him!"

"Scout, what happened?" Heavy asked.

"Pyro! Sniper! Can either of you hear me?" Engineer called into the two way.

"Guys, Spy...I think he just got eaten!"

* * *

Sniper made sure that Pyro had his empty rifle with him. Pyro still looked incredibly wary of the idea of getting out, but his lungs burned and he was finding it harder and harder to breathe in the close to 120 degree car.

Sniper waited for the right moment, watching the dog, which was now sitting upright and looking in at them both. It seemed to know that they were planning something. Maybe if it was smart enough to know to chew through the gas line it was smart enough to already know what they were doing. "Remember to get out and hide the second we're near the front door," Sniper whispered. Pyro nodded.

He tightened his hand on the door release mechanism and lingered on it for close to a minute as he tried to gather up the courage to open the door. Finally, after what seemed like hours, he pulled the handle and released the door, leaving it partially open as he took off towards the house.

Thankfully Bucky forgot about Pyro and the open door and lunged towards Sniper. For an animal that had been hit by a car and killed over six months ago, Bucky was certainly fast. The only thing Sniper could think of other than how much it hurt to run right about now was, _"Oh, shit! He's still faster than I thought he would be!"_

He heard the passenger side door open and shut behind him and looked over his shoulder to make sure that it hadn't caught the dog's attention. Instead he realized that the hellhound was barely a foot behind him.

 _You can do this_ , he mentally told himself. _You've outrun dingoes before back home, remember?_ He did remember. Except when he was running from dingoes, he didn't have broken bones, wasn't on the verge of heat exhaustion, and he was still just a kid, so he didn't even have to run very far before some nearby adult saw it attacking him and shot it dead with a shotgun anyway.

Sniper ran through the house, swerving around the kitchen table and making a break for the back door. He could hear Bucky's feet on the floor, the animal's hot breath on the back of his legs, and knew that if he hesitated or slowed for even just a second he'd be dog food. Thankfully luck was on his side, and as he made a sharp left in the living room, Bucky once again took a spill on the magazines and once more went flying out the backdoor.

He wanted to stop and slow his pounding heart. He could barely breathe and he felt like he was on the verge of throwing up. Instead he kept running, motivating himself by telling himself in his head, " _If that little wanker Scout can do this, so can I!"_ He ran back through the kitchen and towards the open door of the car. Thankfully Pyro was nowhere in sight and was hopefully hiding somewhere safe. Right before he could dive in, Sniper jumped aside, allowing Bucky to leap into the front seat. Before the dog could correct his mistake and get back out again, the door slammed shut, trapping him inside.

Sniper leaned against the side of the car, panting, and slid to the ground beneath while the dog jumped at the window, slobbering up the interior and running back and forth from the driver's side to the passenger's side. Bucky attempted to shove his snout through the thin cracks between the windows and the door frame, but the windows hadn't been rolled down enough for him to fit more than the tip of his snout through.

Pyro stood up from where he had been hiding on the other side of the vehicle and slowly stumbled around the front to Sniper's side. His gait reminded Sniper of the undead that they had been fighting for the last several hours.

"Come on, Pyro," he panted.

They stood at the front door while Sniper aimed Pyro's flare gun at the car. He fired it towards the underside and watched as the gasoline that had poured out onto the dirt from the ruined gas line instantly burst into flame and caught the entire car alight. Bucky noticeably became frantic in his attempts to escape from the vehicle. In his panic he must have hit the parking break because the car started to roll backwards down the incline. It picked up speed and roared by, still on fire, before colliding with a massive tree at the bottom.

Sniper was still watching it burn when he heard a thud behind him. He turned around and found Pyro laying motionless on the kitchen floor. "Pyro?" he said. Pyro didn't acknowledge that Sniper had just said anything to him. The painful wheezing through his mask had stopped.

 _I think Pyro just had a bloody heat stroke,_ was the only thing that currently ran through Sniper's panicked mind.

* * *

It was about two hours or so before the alley was clear enough for it to be safe for Spy to crawl out again. If climbing a smelly dumpster was already low enough on the list of things he loathed to do that day, hiding underneath one shattered box office records for the lowest ratings of all time. Still, he was simultaneously surprised and relieved that this hiding place had worked. He thought for sure the zombies would have grabbed him and dragged him out, but thankfully Scout shot dead any that had seen where he had hid. The smell of the dumpster must have masked his smell from the rest of them because he didn't see any others reaching under for him afterwards.

"Thank you, Plot Convenience Dumpster!" he said to the dumpster that had hidden him from harm.

"You're welcome, Spy!" the dumpster replied.

He pulled his revolver and shot a stray zombie in the head. The sound attracted another stray which he dispatched by stabbing it through the eye with his knife. He searched the alley, following the sound of static and a garbled voice until he found the radio that he had dropped in the scramble to get away. It had been kicked halfway down the alley and was now buried under soggy cardboard and an overturned trash can. Everything down to his insides were going to need a shower when this was over.

"This is Spy. I'm still alive and making my way back to the police station now," he said into the radio. No sense in worrying them any longer, right? He waited, yet no one answered. "This is Spy. Can anyone hear me?" he said into it again.

A garbled and broken response came through the tinny sounding speaker, but it wasn't for him. It sounded like Engineer trying to hail Sniper and Pyro. He called into the radio once more and yet again went ignored. It was then that it occurred to him that the radio was broken and they couldn't hear him.

"Great," he grumbled.

He was about to throw it when he heard a garbled voice through the radio. _"I'm not alright."_

* * *

 _Nicole's Note: Count your blessings, Medic. I could have made you do the Silent Hill 3 bird puzzle and then followed it up with the Resident Evil 3 water test puzzle._

 _Banana: Now that one actually ruined an entire night for me._


	6. Don't Dead Open Inside

_This was another hard to finish one, and Nicole wasn't around to help, so I was left on my own. Ugh..._

 _Nicole's Note: Well excuse me for having a job._

* * *

"Sniper!" Engineer said into the walkie talkie. "Sniper, Pyro, can you hear me?" He'd been calling on and off every fifteen minutes for the last hour. Every minute that they didn't answer filled him with dread. "It's alright. They're okay," he tried to reassure himself. "Prob'ly just dropped their radio or maybe they're out of range."

Scout watched Engineer pacing back and forth, occasionally speaking into the radio to try and hail Sniper or Pyro. It was a well known fact by now that Pyro and Engineer probably had the most well-balanced friendship of any of the nine mercenaries, so it must have been killing him not to know where Pyro was right now or if he was okay.

"Do you think Spy's okay?" Scout asked.

He'd been back for an hour now and still no one had seen hide nor hair of the guy. He hadn't tried to contact them on the police radio, either. Between Spy and Sniper being missing, Scout had nearly gone catatonic for a few minutes.

Engineer was about to say something to try to comfort him when a voice crackled over the radio. _"Engineer, are you there?"_ It sounded like Sniper, but his voice was harried and out of breath. _"Where are you guys? I'm not alright."_

Both Engineer and Scout dove for the table. Scout had speed to his advantage while Engineer had the benefit of standing just a foot or two away and they both reached it at the exact same time. Engineer yanked it out of Scout's hands and fumbled for the talk button.

"Sniper! We've been tryin' to reach you fer two hours!" Engineer shouted back into the two-way. "What happened? Are you alright?"

" _I...I don't know. I think Pyro's dead."_

Scout had to take the radio back from Engineer when he just stood there in stunned silence. "What do you mean you think he's dead? What happened?" he asked. He didn't sound as calm as he tried to. "Did you get swarmed? What happened?"

" _We got trapped in a car and it got really hot and now I don't even know if he's still breathing..."_

Medic overheard the conversation from the other room. He shoved Demoman and Soldier aside when they continued to block the doorway and snatched the two-way from Scout. "Sniper, this is Medic. Did you take his gas mask off so he can get some air?"

" _What, are you fuckin' crazy? He'll kill me!"_ Sniper protested.

"Well, maybe if you take off his mask and he starts breathing, Pyro will be so glad to be alive that he won't kill you, and if you take it off and he's already dead, then he'll just be too dead to care," Scout suggested from the background.

"That's not helping," Medic shook his head. To Sniper he said, "Sniper, just take it off. If he gets angry with you, just tell him I told you to do it."

There was a long pause. _"Fine,"_ Sniper finally responded. After another lengthy pause, he finally responded again, this time his voice sounding a little more excited. _"He's okay!"_

Engineer suddenly snapped back to life from his semi-catatonic state and yanked the two way towards his face, despite the fact that Medic was still holding onto it. "He's okay? He's breathing?" he asked.

" _Yes! I tried to take off his mask and he punched me in the face and started screaming at me, so I think he's feeling a little better!"_

"See? He's fine. He probably just passed out from the heat," Medic replied. "Now where are you?"

" _We're still at the..."_

They could faintly hear the sound of broken glass and growling right before Sniper dropped their end of the conversation. No matter how much they shouted into the radio, he never picked it up again.

* * *

" _Sniper, just take it off. If he gets angry with you, just tell him I told you to do it."_

Sniper paused, holding the radio in front of his face as he stared at Pyro's inert form in front of him. "Fine," he finally responded. He set the radio down on the ground beside him and scooted a little closer on his knees to the unconscious firebug. He already had a feeling that he was going to regret this.

Sniper reached for the sides of his mask, looking for clasps of any kind that he could loosen to remove it. His fingers felt something, and he was about to try to pull it off when a gloved fist flew up and hit him. Once the initial shock from getting punched in the face passed, he realized that Pyro was shouting something at him.

"HM-MMUM-HMPH!" Pyro shouted, waving his arm threateningly towards Sniper.

Even as Pyro continued to berate him, all Sniper could feel was a sense of relief. "You're okay!" he shouted at Pyro. He grabbed the radio and shouted back into it, "He's okay!"

Engineer was unsurprisingly the first voice they heard respond. _"He's okay? He's breathing?"_

"Yes! I tried to take off his mask and he punched me in the face and started screaming at me, so I think he's feelin' a little better!"

" _See? He's fine. He probably just passed out from the heat,"_ Medic replied. _"Now where are you?"_

"We're still at the..."

Glass shattered through the kitchen window and sprayed the floor. Pyro looked up in shock as the charred but nonetheless still animate carcass of a growling dog stood on the table, a few flickers of flame still lapping at the smoking body.

"Rack off, you zombie bastard! I've had just about enough of you!" Sniper shouted at it angrily.

While Pyro was struggling to stand up and get away in his weakened state, Sniper placed a hand on the handle of his kukri. Seeing him moving towards the blade, the dog lunged at him. He quickly unsheathed it and brought it down on Bucky's face.

There was a high pitched yelp and Bucky pulled back away from the blade. The motion to get away tore off his remaining ear. The dog tried to go around him to attack from behind, but Sniper had enough experience dealing with the enemy Spy to know how to maneuver around him. He brought the kukri down on the dog again, once again causing it to yelp. Bucky shrieked and thrashed as Sniper threw it to the floor and jumped on it to hold it down, bringing the kukri down again and again until long after it stopped moving and the dog's head was a bloody, pulpy mass of rotting brain matter and charcoal.

There was a hand on his arm, stopping him from bringing the kukri down yet again on the animal's head. Sniper was about to fight back on instinct, but was able to stop himself in time when he realized it was Pyro. His tired arm fell to the floor. He realized they both must have looked a mess after the day's ordeal.

Sniper dug through his pocket and removed the key. "All that for this," he grumbled, "and we can't even get it back to the station."

They were both too hot and exhausted to walk that far. The car was a burning wreck at the other end of the incline. They were alone. They had no flamethrower fuel or ammo and only a few flares left in Pyro's flare gun for protection.

They were just about to give up when they heard the honking of a car outside. Sniper watched as Pyro cautiously inched along the floor and poked his head through the open door to see who it was. At once the firebug shot up and excitedly ran out across the lawn. Must have been someone he knew, which meant it was probably safe to come out.

Sniper got up on wobbly legs and followed after him. As he breached into the sunlight, he sighed when he saw who it was. "I guess that's twice I owe you."

"Just get in," Spy replied from the front seat of the car. "We don't have time to lose."

Sniper didn't realize that he left the radio on the floor of the kitchen until they were well on their way. Spy had since thrown his since it was broken anyway, leaving them virtually cut off from everyone else. Now that they were in a car it wouldn't be that long, and the others couldn't leave without the key in Sniper's pocket anyway, so they weren't too worried about being left behind anyway.

"You could've shown up a little sooner, mate," Sniper teased. He looked over his shoulder into the backseat. Pyro had fallen asleep and was snoring softly. They just let him be. Who knew if he'd get a chance to sleep again anytime soon anyway? He was starting to feel tired himself.

Their arrival back at the station was welcomed by several turrets following the car as it moved. They worried that one or all of them might start firing, but fortunately they seemed capable of telling them apart from the dead. Either that or they were already out of ammo.

"We're back!" Sniper shouted as they walked through the front door.

"Pyro!" Engineer and Pyro ran to each other and started jumping around like giddy schoolgirls as they reunited.

Scout looked to be in shock when he saw Spy was alive. He didn't say anything, but it was obvious by his wordless expression that he was secretly relieved that he was okay. Sniper grabbed the front of his hat and pulled it down in front of his face as he walked by.

"Nice to see you got back safe too, kid," Sniper told him while Scout pulled it back out of his face.

"Got the key?" Medic asked. Sniper held it in front of him. "Wunderbar!" Without another word, not even to ask if they were okay or needed any medical assistance, Medic snatched the key from his hand and walked off with it.

"Don't worry, Medic, I'm fine," Sniper called after him sarcastically. "It's not like I just spent several hours in a hot car and have broken bones or anything."

"Oh, do you want me to check if they're still broken again?" Medic offered.

Sniper's arms shot over his chest and shielded his ribs. "No thank you..."

* * *

The chief undid all of the locks with the retrieved keys. There was some brief concern when the pink one turned out to be a little bit bent, but he was able to force it in place by wiggling it a bit. Once all five locks were undone, the door itself made a loud thud as the master lock was overridden, and the door was allowed to be opened.

"Alright then, you're going to want to take these keys with you. They're needed to open the door at the end of the tunnel, don't cha know?" He handed the keys to Sniper, who promptly pocketed them.

Medic suddenly spun around to address the rest of the team. "Oh! I almost forgot to ask! Did anyone get bit while they were out?"

"Yes!" Soldier said with pride. "Lieutenant Bites shows me his love all the time!"

"Not by the raccoon, Dummkopf, by the zombies. Did anyone get bit by the zombies?"

"Why are you concerned about getting bitten?" Heavy inquired.

"I had been observing how the infection seems to spread on the drive to the station, and it seems like it's primarily passed through the bites of the undead," Medic explained. "I wished to test my hypothesis, but Engineer so rudely refused to be my guinea pig!"

"Ah'm not turnin' myself into a zombie so you can study me!" Engineer protested.

"Ja, ja, only think of yourself, why don't you? Never think about how you can contribute to science."

"Wait, bites spread the infection, you say?" Chief Ryan asked.

"Ja! I believe the closer the bite is to your brain, the quicker you turn. Just like rabies!"

"So kind of like this?" The chief pulled back his sleeve to reveal a large, bloody chomp taken out of his arm with a comically small Band-Aid stuck right in the middle. "Some guy came in to file a missing persons report right before you and he decided to take a bite out of me, don't cha know?"

The team stared in shock at the bite. "No...we didn't know...but we would've liked to have known that earlier!" Medic replied.

"Well, thanks for the help! We'll just um...sneak past you now," Scout said. He took off down the tunnel. The rest of the team quickly pushed past the chief, leaving him standing in his office, the door to the tunnel wide open.

"I feel funny, eh?" the chief said to the empty room.

* * *

"Why did you take that with you?" Scout asked.

"Lieutenant Bites wished to honor a fallen friend with a proper American funeral!" Soldier replied as he carried the stuffed raccoon under his arm. Lieutenant Bites didn't even seem to notice it and was busy trying to bite Soldier's legs while they walked.

The tunnel smelled of mildew and must and was dark, enough so that they couldn't help but walk into each other on occasion, and at one point Heavy straight up shoved Sniper into the wall by accident. Soldier eventually had to pick up and carry his raccoon when someone trodded across his tail. The only source of illumination was a single flashlight from Engineer's toolbox, cigarette lighters, and the radioactive green glow of the apology gift in Soldier's pocket.

"What if this tunnel doesn't actually have an exit and we're just heading to our deaths at a dead end?" Spy asked.

"Well then we just head back to our deaths at the other end," Medic pointed out dryly.

"But then what?" Demo asked.

"Then I don't know."

The light from the flashlight started to flicker. Engineer hit it a few times, but it only remained bright for a few seconds before growing dim again. "Great. Ah think my batteries are dyin'."

They picked up the pace a little and occasionally cast glances over their shoulders when they swore they heard something breathing back there. A few times it turned out to have just been Pyro's mask amplifying his own breathing, but a few times he was actually in front of everyone.

"Is that a door?" Scout asked.

All the way at the other end of the tunnel, the flashlight illuminated what appeared to be a metal door, so covered in rust that it looked like the surface of Mars. It clearly had not been opened since the day it had been installed. There were colored locks identical to the ones on the door at the station. Those five locks were currently the only thing between them and the exit to this awful place.

"Keys," Spy requested. Sniper reached into his pocket and retrieved them. "All of them, s'il vous plait?"

"What do you mean? That is all of them, mate," he replied.

Spy held them up so they could be seen in the beam of the flashlight. "There should be five of them. You gave me four."

"What?" Sniper reached into his pocket again, but it was empty. Despite the unlikelihood of finding them there, he checked all of his pockets for the key, and finally searched the damp ground around him to see if he had dropped it. "Spook, I don't know how to tell you this, but I don't have it."

"What do you mean you don't have it?!" Spy demanded. "How can you not have it?!"

"I must have dropped it when Heavy shoved me!" he pointed out. "Unless...maybe I dropped it when I was putting them in my pocket back at the station?" The others groaned at the realization that it was gone. "Look, this is no big deal! Someone just has to go back and look for it."

"And why don't you do that? You're the one who lost it!" Spy asked.

"I broke two ribs, got locked in a hot car by an angry dog, _almost died,_ and then had to fight off said dog by myself. I am not going anywhere!"

"Why not make Scout do it?" Medic suggested. "He's the fastest. He'll get back here in no time!"

"Woah, wait! I'm not going back there by myself!" Scout protested. "What if he dropped it back in the station and that police guy is a zombie by now?"

"Don't make Scout go. He's had a rough day," Sniper agreed. "He thought he saw Spy die!"

"Maybe we should be making Soldier go," Heavy suggested.

"Hey, you're right. He did get us into this mess," Sniper agreed.

"Are you mad, Private? I'm transporting the dead right now! I can't just abandon him!" Soldier said of the stuffed raccoon.

"Well someone needs to go!"

"Hm-mphf," Pyro volunteered.

"No, you're not goin' anywhere! Ah'm still not certain you're completely recovered from heat stroke!" Engineer stopped him. "Since no one else wants to do it, ah'll go!"

"I'll come with ya," Demoman offered.

"Thanks, Demo." Pyro looked in distress at Engineer's leaving. He reached to his holster and pulled out the flare gun before handing it to him so that he at least wasn't unarmed. "Hopefully ah won't need it, buddy."

"We'll be back," Demoman said to the others before they left.

Engineer's flashlight faded as they walked further down the passageway and away from the others until it was just a moving light in the distance. "What are the odds that only one of them comes back?" Scout asked.

Sniper swatted him in the back of the head. "Don't upset Pyro! He's had a rough day too!"

* * *

Engineer shown the flashlight all over the ground on the path, hoping to see a glimmer that might have been the pink key, trying to remember exactly where it was that Sniper had been shoved. This task wasn't helped by the dying batteries. He could have sworn he had just changed the damn things. Pyro must have been using his flashlight to read comic books in the dark again.

It must have been a lot further back than they realized because they had been walking for almost ten minutes before they even saw the glimmer on the ground. Engineer reached to the ground and retrieved the pink key.

"That's it!" Engineer said with relief. "We can go!"

"Hold on..." Demoman squinted into the darkness suspiciously. "Something's there..."

"What do you mean?"

"Ah heard it..."

The flashlight died to a very dim stream. Engineer shook it in hopes of jogging the battery. The second he got it working again, he dropped it into an inch deep puddle of stagnant water and almost stumbled backwards when the beam illuminated something there.

"What the hell?!" Demoman said, indicating he had seen it too.

Engineer fumbled for the flare gun that Pyro had given him, but with the flashlight in the puddle, there wasn't enough light for him to see what he was aiming at. The flare bounced off the ground and rolled to a stop, illuminating the hall just long enough for them to see what they were looking at.

It was crouching on the ground like an animal, but still looked vaguely human. It had a skinned appearance and an exposed brain, but the worst part was that it had no eyes to illuminate and give away its presence, and it could have been there lurking in the dark for who knows how long. What it did have though was a very familiar mustache that indicated that the thing that they were looking at was indeed the former Chief Ryan.

The flare then burned out, plunging the tunnel back into pitch darkness.

* * *

The others heard the first explosion from the other end of the tunnel. It sounded like a detonated sticky bomb, the only type of ammo that Demoman had left. A second and third explosion followed it before he'd used the last of those too.

It had taken them about ten minutes to get there and less than half that to book it back. Pyro had only given Engineer two flares. The first had been wasted trying to hit a small target in the dark while the second one he used to illuminate the path so that they weren't running blindly. The others could see the flare brightly lighting up the tunnel, and hear the high pitched screech that echoed through it behind Demoman and Engineer.

"We've got the key!" Demoman shouted. "Get the door open!"

Engineer tossed it in their direction in hopes that they could get it open before they had a chance to reach them. Heavy tried to catch it but fumbled and dropped it. The flare burned out and the tunnel was once again dark. "I dropped it!"

"Move!" Sniper said, shoving him aside this time as he searched the ground with only his lighter for illumination. He finally found the key and grabbed it, turning to the door and frantically trying to undo the final lock with it. "It's stuck! This is the one that was bent, isn't it?"

Engineer and Demoman had reached them by now. "Hurry!" Engineer shouted.

"I'm tryin'!"

They heard another screech and the click clack of claws on the stone surface. They searched the floor for it but realized that the sound wasn't coming from the floor. It was coming from above them.

"Let me!" Spy shoved him aside and fidgeted with the key.

Scout started choking as something slimy dropped from the ceiling, wrapped around his neck, and started strangling him. The others didn't even seem to notice as they were more preoccupied with both searching the dark for a monster that was closer than they realized and getting the door open. He struggled to get away from it when finally Heavy seemed to notice. He grabbed the thing by the slimy appendage, which turned out to be its tongue, and gave it a good, hard yank, tearing it from the ceiling and causing it to crash to the floor with a comically high pitched shriek of surprise. It retracted its tongue and retreated back into the dark.

Spy was finally able to get the key to turn, but to his frustration the door was firmly rusted shut and the second lock didn't disengage. "Will something in my life just work for once today?!" Spy shouted to no one in particular. Pyro and Engineer started helping him pull and pry at the door to try and force it open.

"The door is rusted shut!" Sniper told the others. "We can't get it open!"

"I'll help!" Heavy offered before charging towards the door.

The door didn't even stand a chance. It exploded into splinters of rust and metal and poor Pyro went flying from the force of the impact with Heavy. Engineer quickly ran to make sure he was okay.

The creature behind them charged into the light after them. It flung itself towards them, claws extended, firmly ready to maul the first one it caught. Finally with enough light to see, Spy pulled out his revolver and fired a single shot into its exposed brain. It landed on the ground and stumbled a moment before its brain exploded into pieces of gore with two more well placed shots and it fell to the ground, twitching in a growing puddle of blood before finally dying.

Scout collapsed on the ground breathing heavily after having just been strangled and Sniper ran to check on him. Many of them were still adjusting to the sudden light. Pyro was unsteady on his feet next to Engineer from having been rammed across the desert, but otherwise seemed to be okay. Soldier immediately got his shovel and started digging a grave for the fallen raccoon while Lieutenant Bites licked himself a few feet nearby.

"Well we're clearly not in Teufort anymore," Engineer said with relief.

"So where are we?" Medic asked.

"Oh no...is that...?" Sniper said. "It is! Let's just go back! I'm not going near that crazy place!"

They looked at the town that was visible about a football stadium's length away from the exit to the tunnel. A few feet from where they stood was a sign that read _"Night Vale: 16 interdimensional miles; Rest stop and sacrificial chamber available"_.

* * *

 _Chief Ryan pretty much turned into a classic, Resident Evil 2 licker that uses smoker tactics. Yes I know that lickers have to be normal zombies first. Why did he turn into a licker? Because I've been working on this for a month now. I've been writing and rewriting this chapter in an attempt to make it something worth reading and I'm freaking out of ideas by now, guys!_


	7. Welcome to Team Fortress

_Surprise crossover! Of course Night Vale is next to Teufort! Night Vale can probably be next to anyplace it wants, regardless of country, planet, or dimension. It's Night Vale! Just keep heading straight down the road and you'll hit Desert Bluffs eventually, but why would you want to? It's Desert Bluffs. Ew, Desert Bluffs..._

 _...seriously though. It was a surprise even to us. It only happened because I finished writing the last chapter and thought, "Hey, wouldn't it be funny if..."_

* * *

 _As you sit in the darkness and ponder the meaning and the existence of the sky, you feel at least you are safe here, far from its all-seeing, all-knowing eye. Welcome to Night Vale._

The people of Teufort generally avoided this place like it was a pillowcase infested with scorpions. The people were weird and visitors tended to go missing, only to reappear months later with no idea what had happened or where they even went. Sniper had been there once and only once because he needed to get something that wasn't sold in Teufort and he was pretty sure that the rifle part he brought back was haunted.

They didn't like it, but they very well couldn't get to California on foot, and Night Vale was the closest place they could go to rent a car. After much debate, they decided to take their chances and go in.

"I don't know about you guys, but I'm just gonna wait out here for you," Scout said. Pyro nodded and stood next to him. When even Pyro was weirded out by a place, you knew it was somewhere to avoid.

"No, we stick together!" Medic insisted. He shooed them both along as they made their way in.

There were zombies hobbling around Night Vale in thin herds, but no one looked at them or even acknowledged that they were there. A pair waiting at the bus stop for a bus that was late stared off into the distance while a zombie bit chunks out of the woman's arm. This would almost seem weird if they hadn't just passed a dog riding a bicycle and saw what they swore was literally a five headed dragon walking by.

"Where the hell does one rent a car here?" Sniper asked.

"Maybe we should ask for directions?" Spy suggested.

"Yeah. You try talking to one of these people!"

Spy decided to take him up on his offer. He approached what looked like a normal human being and asked him, "Excuse me, do you know where we could rent a car?"

" _Tnecca ruoy dnatsrednu tonnac I,"_ the man responded in some kind of weird, backwards sounding dialect.

Spy stared at him in utter bafflement. "I have no idea what that man just said!"

"What, is Night Valian not one of your eight languages, Spy?" Sniper teased.

Pyro lit up and approached the man. "Mm-fhm-hmm?" he said to the man.

The stranger looked surprised at the sound of Pyro's muffled voice. _"Uoy! Yltneuqole os ekops ohw rehtona tem reven evah I! Dlihc, deen uoy that ti si tahw?"_

"Hm-mm-hmm-mpfh-hm," Pyro replied.

" _Ysae s'taht, ho! Teerts eht nwod og tsuj. Kcor gnitaolf eht ta tfel nrut. Kcor gnitaolf eht ot ecnarusni rac lles ot yrt ro, egdelwonkca, ta kool, ta pots t'nod. Gnidliub a si teerts eht fo dne rehto eht ta nwod. Swodniw on dna srood on sah ti. Ruflus dna Egdelp nomel fo sllems ohw ebor eulb a ni nam a ot kaeps dna kcab eht ot og. Rac a uoy tner ll'eh."_

"Mmph-hm!" Pyro thanked him.

"Emoclew er'uoy," he replied. Having finished talking to him, he held his arms out at either side and walked backwards into the tall bushes, disappearing inside the shrubbery.

"Well that was different," Scout said once the encounter was over.

"What did they say?" Sniper asked.

"Ah don't know! Ah have no idea what ever goes on in this place!" Engineer replied in exasperation. Pyro pointed to the end of the street and mumbled something. "Apparently he wants us ta go to the end of the street."

Pyro seemed to have successfully asked the weird (normal for this town maybe?) guy for directions as he lead them to a building with no doors or windows and proceeded to walk around back where a shadowy figure hiding in the darkness that smelled of Pledge and sulfur seemed to already be waiting for them.

"What can I do for you?" the shadowy figure said.

"Well..." Engineer turned around and noticed that Pyro was the only one standing nearby. All the others were at least fifteen yards back, huddled tightly together as though expecting something to try and grab one of them. Sniper motioned for him to continue. "Well, I guess I'm handlin' it on my own, then," he sighed. "We were just lookin' to rent a car,"

"Rent a car? And why do you want to do that?" he asked.

"Well, we kinda need to get somewhere to stop all the zombies..."

"Stop right there!" the figure said angrily. "Do not speak of the Ones We Do Not Speak Of. You'll make them angry!"

"Ah'll make the...One's You Do Not Speak Of angry?"

"No! Them..." He looked out into the trees and silently stared for five minutes. Engineer looked over his shoulder at the others and found they were just as baffled as he was. Suddenly he looked back and carried on as though that hadn't just happened. "Now, is there any kind of car that you had in mind?"

They only rented one car that was barely big enough for the nine of them, plus one raccoon. According to the contract he signed, the rental cost six months of Engineer's life and there was no guarantee that it wouldn't randomly teleport them to another city when stopped at certain traffic lights in the continental US.

"Well at least we can finally leave this awful place!" Spy said as he turned the key in the ignition and backed the car up. There was a noticeable _thump_ and the vehicle lurched slightly. He immediately stopped the car and looked out, hoping to see what had just gone under the tires.

"What was noise?" Heavy asked.

Soldier suddenly started looking around frantically. "Has anyone seen Lieutenant Bites?!"

"You know Spy, there's something called a rear view mirror. It's this thing they invented so you can stop murdering all of our pets. You should look at it sometimes," Sniper suggested sarcastically.

"Ferme ta gueule!" Spy snapped at him.

* * *

As it turned out, "Lieutenant Bites" was not much different as "Lieutenant Bites the Dust". Instead of rabies, he now had the zombie virus as an excuse for his biting, snarling, and foaming at the mouth. Instead of smelling like the garbage that he kept getting into, he now smelled like decomposition, which was generally the same smell as the dumpster that he and the other raccoons raided on a daily basis anyway. He was a little bit flatter now, but Soldier was at least able to keep his organs from falling out through his ruptured stomach wall by wrapping him with some of the duct tape he kept on hand for field repairs.

"Why did we let him keep that thing again?" Medic asked as it flailed about in Soldier's arms, trying to grab Demoman with its putrid paws.

"You would have done same for Archimedes!" Heavy pointed out.

"Archimedes is sweet and adorable and full of love. That thing drags garbage through the halls and bites anyone who tries to take it from him!"

"Well we have it with us now, so there's no use complainin'," Engineer pointed out.

They were fifteen minutes out of Night Vale when with just one line, Scout managed to make nearly every one of the seven other passengers in the vehicle groan at once. "I have to go to the bathroom."

"Why didn't you go before we left?!" Medic demanded.

"Because I didn't have to go then, but now I do!" he replied. "And also there was something in the bathroom whispering 'leave' every time I went near the door!"

Sniper reached into his bag and retrieved a glass jar, which he then passed over his shoulder to Scout behind him. "There ya go. Don't spill it," he replied in a deadpan manner.

Scout stared at the jar, held it out in front of him, and unceremoniously dropped it, causing it to fall with a thud to the floor of the van. "No thanks. I think I can hold it..."

"Attention men, I have to go to the bathroom too!" Soldier announced loudly to even more groans.

"This might be bad time to mention I am hungry," Heavy pointed out.

Pyro mumbled something that no one could understand and drew an octopus with ash on the back of the seat in front of him.

Spy stopped abruptly in front of the only other car on the road, causing the old lady in the Cadillac behind them to nearly collide with their bumper. "Okay, look, there's a Quickee Mart! We'll stop for ten minutes, but then after that we aren't stopping for anything!" he said impatiently before doing a U-turn and pulling into the parking lot.

* * *

Pyro was still looking from the men's bathroom to the women's bathroom, trying to decide which one he should use, when Scout and Soldier emerged. Everyone in the store was giving them a wide berth, especially as Demoman pushed Sniper and the bottle of water he had on the counter aside at the cash register so he could put down two armfuls of booze.

"Uh...is that all sir?" the guy behind the counter asked.

"Nope. Just all ah could carry," Demo replied before heading back to the shelves of alcohol.

Sniper looked at the counter invaded by liquor bottles and pushed his water bottle past them. "Just this and the cigarettes, thanks..."

Pyro evidently gave up on using the bathroom and was now in the cosmetic aisle smearing cheap, trashy lipstick all over his gas mask. "Is not your color, comrade," Heavy informed him on the way past with a cooler full of Quickee Mart sandwiches.

Spy jumped when a hand shot out from the shirt racks and grabbed him. "Ha! I can't believe I actually snuck up on _you_ for once!" Scout laughed as he emerged from the racks.

"Ha. I still know where you sleep, when you sleep, and for how long..." Spy replied threateningly.

Soldier grabbed a handful of wildlife magazines off a rack and angrily slammed them down on the counter. "This is America! Who put this Soviet propaganda on the magazine racks?!" he demanded.

"That's a North American grizzly bear, sir..." an employee pointed out. "Bears live in America too."

After terrorizing the employees and taking half the food and all the alcohol from the store, they were all back in the car and putting on their seatbelts about fifteen minutes later. "Is everyone ready to go?" Spy asked before turning the key in the ignition.

"Wait...where is Pyro?" Medic asked.

Everyone started searching the parking lot when they realized he was missing.

They quickly found Pyro still in the Quickee Mart, trying to light a rack of fireworks leftover from Labor Day on fire. "DON'T!" Engineer shouted before tackling him to the ground.

They ended up stopping two more times within the next ten minutes because Scout spilled soda all over Spy and Soldier decided that he had to go to the bathroom again. They ended up stopping a third time because Spy accidentally ran over a ground squirrel in his quest to kill every four legged animal in New Mexico and Pyro forced him to pull over so that he could mourn over it for two minutes, get distracted by an armadillo, and forget what he was so upset about earlier.

"How far have we gotten?" Sniper asked impatiently while Pyro was strapping himself back into his seatbelt, the armadillo in his lap.

Spy leaned out the window and looked behind him. He could still see the Quickee Mart down the road. "If I tell you, do you promise not to stab me in an angry rage again?"

* * *

The rest of the journey to California was way longer than it should have been and wrought with complaints about how Lieutenant Bites was trying to bite Heavy, or Scout was driving too fast, or Pyro was driving too erratic, or about the improperly sealed jarate that Soldier accidentally kicked over. Every time they saw a rest stop, _someone_ decided they had to go to the bathroom. Five minutes after they left the rest stop, _someone else_ decided they had to go to the bathroom. At one point Soldier decided that _his raccoon_ had to go to the bathroom. When they refused to stop for the raccoon, they ended up having to pull over a minute later when it turned out he was right and the zombified procyonid had already peed all over Soldier and Demoman. When they finally got back on the road again, they drove for fifteen minutes straight before they realized that Scout wasn't in the vehicle and had to drive back to pick him up again.

"We better get there soon. I have to get back and feed my doves!" Medic complained. "Archimedes gets very fussy when he's hungry!"

(Meanwhile back at home, Archimedes and Private Paws were currently fighting over an eyeball they had found on the ground.)

The night was creeping in like an undead without legs by the time they reached their destination. The zombies were just as thick in California as they were in Teufort and they ended up having to slow down as they bounced off or under the vehicle.

"Sniper, we can't keep driving through them like this. We're going to get stuck!" Spy pointed out.

"We'll be fine," Sniper replied. Suddenly there was a popping sound under the hood of the car. Smoke billowed from the engine and it smelled like a burning carcass. "Or maybe we just got zombie parts in the engine and fried it..."

All around them, zombies pressed up against the sides of the cars and pushed on it. Pyro shrieked and hugged Engineer, the armadillo rolling up into a ball in his lap to hide. The sounds of moaning undead seemed to calm the zombie raccoon, which for the first time since they'd known it seemed almost tame in Soldier's arms.

"Merde," Spy muttered. "What do we do now?"

"Do we seem ta be movin'?" Demoman asked.

They all suddenly felt it. They were rolling forward. The zombies were pushing them over a hill. The car rocked forward with every second as the undead piled onto the back. The second they made it over the hump, the car rolled forward and quickly gathered momentum down the steep incline.

"Brace yourselves!" Sniper shouted.

The car broke free of the zombies and flew down the street. They hit a parked vehicle and despite Sniper's best attempts to steer it straight, it still zigzagged down the road before finally colliding with a stone wall. The car seemed to have taken most of the impact damage and it was a miracle none of them died. They all sat in the car, shaken up, the raccoon suddenly hissing again at everyone within its line of sight.

"Did you get the extra insurance on the rental?" Medic asked.

"Well it cost the soul of my nearest and dearest loved one, and ah don't really consider Pyro to be tradable, so no. No ah did not," Engineer sighed.

The sound of the crash seemed to have attracted the undead from all angles. They looked out the smashed windows at the approaching zombies. "We need to leave! Soldier!" Sniper addressed him. "Which way is Merasmus' house?"

"Well it's..." Soldier looked around and frowned. "I don't know! I don't recognize this part of the neighborhood!"

They all groaned at once. "Well we need to get out before we're trapped again, so we'll figure it out while we're running!"

No sooner did Soldier have his foot out the door when Lieutenant Bites leapt from his arms and ran off down the sidewalk. "No! Lieutenant Bites! Come back!" Soldier shouted before chasing off after him.

"Get back here, you idiot!" Sniper shouted after him. And like that he was gone.

Pyro screamed when an arm reached out from under the car and grabbed ahold of him. He was dragged to the ground and tried to get away, but it started to pull him under.

"Pyro!" Engineer shouted. He grabbed his friend and tried to pull him back out.

The swarm made it to the vehicle. They didn't have any chance to wait and there was no time for the others to move in to help Pyro. Demoman, Heavy, and Medic had already gotten a safe distance away and were staring in horror, hoping Engineer could pull Pyro free on his own. The zombie that had him was surprisingly strong, and it took a moment before Engineer realized there were two of them pulling him under. The others were gone. Scout had jumped up and climbed the wall to escape from a pair of zombies that nearly trapped him and Sniper and Spy had taken off in Soldier's direction hoping to catch up to him since he was the only one who knew where Merasmus lived.

Pyro suddenly remembered he had two flares left. He reached for his flare gun and fired one under the vehicle. The zombies burst into flame and released him. Engineer pulled him to his feet and dragged him away. They couldn't see where the others had gone and had no idea that they were running in the opposite direction.

Not that it would have done them any good. In their haste to get away, the other three scattered. Medic was the first one to notice that Heavy and Demoman weren't following him. He didn't realize this until he was already far from the car, and he had no idea where they went.

He was alone. They all were.

* * *

 _That Night Valian who gave Pyro directions was speaking backwards if you hadn't already figured it out. Yes it was as much a pain in the ass to write as it probably was for you to try and read, but consider it some kind of "bilingual bonus"._

 _Almost done, my duckies! There's just one more chapter after this one, and it's finished! Nicole and I thank all two of you for actually reading this and for being kind enough to not voice how much you hate it!_

 _Nicole's Note: Not that you'll get to see the end until tomorrow. I'm exhausted and Banana has already fallen asleep, so I'm posting this on her behalf. I'm going to bed and I'll finish editing the last chapter once I get home from work tomorrow._


	8. And Then A Skeleton Popped Out

_We did it, Nicole! It's the final chapter! The fic is done! It's finally done! I can do something else with my time now! I don't think I'm going to write for a long, long...oh hell, it's National Novel Writing Month, isn't it?_

 _Nicole's Note: I think I'm going to celebrate by rewatching the season premiere of The Walking Dead and spend the rest of the night crying into a fruit cup._

* * *

Everything happened so quickly that the memory was still a blur. Chief Ryan, as it turned out, had not been unique in his mutation, and Pyro and Engineer had run into two of those things simultaneously, along with a herd that was following and eating the path of dead left behind in their wake. They just barely managed to get away. They were surrounded from all sides. Someone had to think quick and fast.

So Engineer did.

* * *

 _I am alone._

These words ran over and over in Pyro's mind as they sat in shock and stared at the zombies pawing at the front door. _I am alone and my best friend is probably dead._ The scenario repeated itself several times. They'd been swarmed. Pyro was limping and not moving as fast as they would have hoped, which gave the zombies the chance to catch up. Engineer had shoved them through the glass doors of the shop, but couldn't make it in himself before a tongue wrapped around him and he was pulled back into the crowd. Pyro waited for several minutes in hopes that he would reemerge, but he didn't.

Engineer was his best friend from day one. He was the only one who could understand them when they spoke. No one really knew why, but it was probably because while everyone else had immediately dismissed Pyro's speech as incoherent mumbling, he was the only one who actually took the time to listen to what they were saying. He was the only one who always seemed to enjoy being around them and never once considered them creepy or a burden. He was the only one who didn't automatically assume that Pyro was stupid and didn't know what anyone was saying or doing around them. He didn't mind whenever Pyro got scared or excited and clung to him or when they interrupted his work to show him something or that they would hog the TV for hours to watch Lassie, or The Twilight Zone, or whatever late night schlocky horror movie was playing that night that would no doubt have them cowering in Engineer's room for the next week.

Engineer was also the only one who knew 100% for sure what Pyro's true gender was, and gladly refused to confirm whether they really were male or not when asked because the fact that everyone thought their gender was apparently a secret amused them both. (Though they were fairly certain that Medic had since figured it out since he was equally as cryptic when pressed for an answer. One couldn't cut someone open in the name of science as many times as he had and not know what kind of organs they did or didn't possess by now.)

The others had gotten better about their treatment of them throughout the years, but they could still tell that the team sometimes deemed them to be more of a childish annoyance than anything. Without Engineer, they felt lonely and ignored.

Eventually the zombies would smash through the glass. They gave them about half an hour at the most. Yet they had no will to move or attempt to leave before they got in. They sat on the floor and watched them trying to smash their way in. Pyro gave up.

And then watched as the windows were splattered with crimson.

* * *

"There you are! Why do you keep running away from me?" Soldier asked the raccoon affectionately. It flailed, a thick stream of greenish drool trailing from the corner of its mouth onto the sleeve of his coat.

He looked up when he heard footsteps racing towards him. "I'm gonna frickin kill ya!" Scout leapt on him and pushed him onto the ground and attempted to strangle him, but Soldier was much stronger and more than capable of holding him off. The raccoon fell from his arms and scurried up a nearby tree. "First you summon frickin zombies on us, now you run from us for a frickin zombie raccoon?!"

"Scout, stop!" Sniper grabbed him from behind and pulled him off of Soldier. " _I_ want to kill him!"

They both glared at Soldier angrily when rather than acknowledging them, he immediately got up and ran to the tree, shouting, "Lieutenant Bites! Come back!"

"Forget about the bloody raccoon, fuckwit! It's a zombie! It's already infected, and there is nothing you can do to help it anymore!" Sniper shouted at him angrily.

"Lieutenant Bites is not just a zombie, he is _my_ zombie!" Soldier shouted back.

"Look, we drove all the way out here to find Merasmus! We don't have time for this shit! Now show us where he is so we can undo all this and go home and pretend it never happened, like we do every time this kind of shit happens!" Soldier looked from him back up the tree. "Again with the fucking raccoon! Don't bloody worry about it! I'm talking to you right now!"

They both jumped when they heard Scout shriek. To their horror, they both realized that all of the shouting had attracted a wayward zombie, which had snuck up behind Scout and taken a bite out of his arm.

"Scout!" Sniper shouted.

They both quickly ran to his rescue. Sniper shoved the zombie off him while Soldier took it out with a well placed whack to the head with his shovel. It twitched on the ground as he swung again and again, making sure it was completely dead. Scout seemed to be in shock and was throwing up at the base of a tree.

"Scout, are you alright?" Sniper asked.

"Stay away from me!" Scout said as he stumbled away in distress. "You'll kill me!"

"We're not goin' to kill you, Scout!" Sniper tried to reassure him. "We just want to help you!"

"Yeah? What about what you said earlier about the raccoon? You said it was infected and you couldn't help it anymore?"

Sniper looked suddenly uncomfortable. He guessed he had said that, but it was in a moment of anger at someone else. "Scout, I was talking about a raccoon, not a person."

"Yeah? Well the sentiment seemed the same! Just yesterday you were trying to convince Engineer to push me off a roof into a crowd of zombies!"

"You tried to feed him to zombies?" Soldier said in horror. "What kind of a soldier sacrifices his own comrades to save himself?" Lieutenant Bites slowly started to creep its way down the trunk of the tree towards Soldier. To its surprise, Soldier didn't even pay it any attention anymore.

"Look, I was only joking about that and you know it. I knew Engineer would never actually push you off," Sniper protested. He noticed the suspicious look that Soldier was giving him and retorted, "What? I was!"

"Yeah well, I guess it doesn't matter anymore. I'll be dead soon anyway." Scout sat down next to the puddle of vomit and looked fairly disheartened off into the distance.

"Scout..." Sniper walked over to his side and sat down next to him. "I'm not going to kill you while we're this close. We're almost to Merasmus. I'm sure once we get to him he'll have a way to undo all of this, which means you won't have to become a zombie."

"You really think Merasmus can undo this?" Scout replied hopefully.

"Well if he can't, I'm keeping you chained up in the basement and feeding him to you," Sniper replied sarcastically.

Scout considered the idea of eking out an existence in Sniper's basement. "I guess I can deal with those odds," he shrugged.

Soldier finally picked his raccoon up off the ground. Lieutenant Bites had begun to grow worried when pawing at his bootlaces didn't draw his attention. "Do you think if he can help Scout that maybe he can help Lieutenant Bites too?" he asked hopefully.

Sniper and Scout both stared at the raccoon, who was once more beginning to twitch and dribble foam from its mouth. "Yeeeah, why not..." Sniper nodded, though he and Scout both were unsure that it was possible at this point. He stood up and extended a hand to Scout. "Come on. Let's go find the others so we can find Merasmus and get the hell back home."

* * *

Heavy could tell Sasha was thankful that he had found a gun shop that hadn't yet been raided by survivors. Mowing down zombies became so much easier and he leisurely strolled down the street, taking out the hordes as they appeared. He saw that a bunch of them had gathered near a small shop, indicating that there was probably someone trapped inside, and figured he'd do them a favor by thinning out the herd a little. Blood splattered the windows as Sasha exploded their heads with her swift rate of fire before finally shattering them into a spray of glass.

He walked by and looked in, surprised to see it was Pyro sitting on the floor just beyond the reach of much of the broken glass. "Pyro?" Heavy said. He looked around but realized that Pyro seemed to be alone. "Where is Engineer?"

He must have said something wrong because Pyro immediately started crying.

* * *

"Nein."

"But they float for nine months before..."

"Nein!"

"But have ya ever even tried it?"

"For the last time, nein! You cannot use a baby as a flotation device!"

Medic had never missed Heavy more than he did now. Why couldn't it have been him that he relocated first? It wasn't that he didn't like Demoman, but he got a little weird when he was drunk, and he'd just taken up his usual coping mechanism to deal with the ongoing apocalypse. Where was Heavy? How could he lose someone who was large enough to be visible from space?

The zombies seemed to be more active at night and yet they weren't being swarmed, so they must be going somewhere. Probably someone made too much noise and they all converged on their location. Maybe there was a grocery store full of delicious, screaming people meats that had them banging on the walls trying to get in.

"Look." Demoman pointed straight ahead. A zombie lay with its brains smashed all over the ground. "Looks like it was caved by a shovel."

There was a puddle of vomit and Medic found some raccoon fur clinging to the bark of a nearby tree. "Soldier's been here at least..." Medic conceded. "But I do not believe that is his vomit."

"Then who...?"

Medic took one look at it. "Scout."

"Ya can tell that just by lookin' at it?"

"It's bright red and smells strongly of Bonk. Who else would it be?" They found three sets of footprints and a tinier set of raccoon tracks cutting across the park. "I believe they went that way."

"Really? Ah'm glad ya specified that for me," Demoman replied. "Ah would've thought it was another group travelin' with a raccoon otherwise."

"I really hate you sometimes," Medic grumbled.

* * *

Pyro leaned against Heavy while they walked and just seemed out of it. If it weren't for the lack of any damage to his fire retardant suit, Heavy would have assumed that he might have been bitten and was on the verge of turning.

"Cheer up, little Pyro! I am sure he is okay somewhere," Heavy tried to reassure him. Pyro made a sound that sounded vaguely like a noncommittal groan of misery but otherwise didn't say anything. "Look! There's Sniper!"

Pyro picked his head up just slightly enough that he could see Sniper waving to them from atop a hill. He looked back at the ground and didn't seem to care. Heavy had to pull him along behind him as they made their way up the hill to ensure that he kept up.

"Is it just you both?" Sniper shouted once they started to near the base of the hill.

"Afraid so," Heavy nodded. "Who else is with you?"

"Soldier and Scout. But before I bring you back here, I need to tell you something..."

Pyro barely listened to a word that Sniper and Heavy were talking about. He heard something about someone getting bit and Heavy telling Sniper that he didn't know where Engineer was, but otherwise didn't pick up on much. He looked around and saw Scout hiding behind Soldier. Was Scout the one that was bit? He walked past Sniper and Heavy towards Soldier and Scout and leaned against the tree, looking just as downtrodden as he was before. Finally the other two regrouped with them.

"We're going to wait just a few more minutes to see if we find anyone else, then we're going to get moving," Sniper informed the waiting group.

Pyro glanced at Scout's arm. He had his hand clamped over it, but blood was oozing through his fingers, making it hard for him to hide the fact that there was a wound there. That was clearly a bite. Scout noticed him looking and didn't seem very pleased. "What are you lookin' at?" he demanded.

Pyro dug through all of his extra pockets and ammo pouches and found an extra flare he didn't know that he had, bringing his total number of remaining flares up to two. He also found what looked like a bandage. He kept them around in case he accidentally burned himself, which happened so frequently that his nerve endings were completely numb in some places. Pushing Scout's hand aside, he wrapped the wound up so that it was at least not exposed to the elements.

"Thanks," Scout replied. At least he didn't have to be in fear that Pyro was going to try and kill him.

"Heavy!" a familiar voice said gleefully. "See, I told you we would find him!"

"Yeah, yeah," Demoman said dismissively.

Medic looked through the group and frowned. "Where's..."

Sniper quickly shushed him. "Pyro's upset about Engineer. Keep quiet."

"What about Spy?" Demoman asked.

"Well he's..." Sniper turned around and realized, perhaps for the first time, that Spy was not there. He looked at Scout. "Wasn't he with us when we were chasing after Soldier?"

"Yeah...he was still with you by the time I caught up anyway...I don't remember when I last saw him."

There was a crashing sound through the trees and Spy stumbled into the clearing, tripping and falling into the mud. He was covered in blood that was not his own and zombie guts. "You bastards abandoned me!" he shouted accusingly at Sniper and Scout.

"See? He's fine!" Sniper said nonchalantly. "And we didn't even have to go looking for him!"

"What happened to your arm?" Spy asked as he got back to his feet.

Scout quickly hid his arm behind him. Some of the blood was starting to soak through the bandage. "Uh, nothin'," he replied. "I cut it on some broken glass when we crashed the car." The others in the know looked at him in shock that he was suddenly hiding it. They noticed Scout looking at Medic in concern and realized that it must have been him finding out that he was afraid of.

"Do you want me to look at it?" Medic offered.

"No! It's fine for now," Scout shook his head.

Sniper motioned towards Soldier. "We can't wait much longer. We have to get back to Merasmus now."

"Right this way!" Soldier said jovially. He grabbed his raccoon off a low hanging branch and marched off through the park, stopping to swing his shovel at a zombie that approached him from the trees.

They filed off one by one after them. Scout and Pyro brought up the rear, Scout looking worried at his bandaged and bloodied arm and Pyro looking behind him, knowing that Engineer wasn't there and hoping that he'd come running from the trees, just a little bit late in catching up with them.

He never showed up. Not that he was expecting him to.

* * *

"That's it?" Demoman said with concern when they arrived.

"Yes! There wasn't really a crowd last time I was here, though..." Soldier replied.

Medic now found out why there weren't that many zombies roaming about. Either all of the undead of the world were converging upon the source of the plague or an Iron Butterfly concert was about to start. Either way it was going to be unpleasant getting to the door.

"Wow, that's...that's one ripper of a crowd," Sniper said in equal parts awe and horror.

Everyone else fell back, keeping an eye out for any undead that wandered too close. "Alright, what resources do we have left?" Sniper asked.

Pyro had the two flares for his flare gun and his lighter. Spy still had his makeshift zombie disguise. Heavy still had rounds for Sasha leftover from his rescue of Pyro. Medic had everything that was in his medical bag. ("You mean all this time you had painkillers and you didn't offer me any for my ribs?!" "You didn't ask for any.") All Sniper had his kukri.

And Soldier had a rocket launcher with exactly one rocket.

"Where were you hiding that all this time?" Spy asked.

"In my pants!" Soldier replied matter of factly. "Sitting has been very uncomfortable!"

"Alright, so we've got something to start with," Sniper said thoughtfully. "But will this get us to the front door?"

"I can hotwire a truck or something and we can drive in as far as it'll let us," Scout suggested.

"Where did you learn to hotwire a car?" Spy asked him accusingly.

Scout shrugged. "One of my brothers."

"Okay, so if we can get a truck, that would make things a little easier," Sniper nodded.

They put together a makeshift plan that revolved around taking out as many zombies as they could in order to clear a path. It required constant movement to avoid being overwhelmed and they'd have to stay together as a group, which would be easier said than done as at this point half the team just wanted to get there, get Merasmus, and go home, and the other half had just spent two days without any sleep.

Spy accompanied Scout while they found a large truck and Scout got to hotwiring it. Though he was clearly trying to hide it, he was sweating by this point and looked nauseous and his hands were shaky. A few times he had to pause as a dizzy spell washed over him. He looked like he was starting to run a high fever.

"So how long ago were you bit, exactly?" Spy asked. Scout almost pulled out the wrong wire at the question. "Are you going to answer me, or just sit there in shock?"

"Don't tell Medic..." he pleaded. "I'm scared that guy's going to use me as an experiment or something!"

"Medic isn't going to experiment on you," Spy reassured him. He didn't mention that it was highly likely that Demoman was the only one who bought the broken glass story and Medic already knew. "But I would have appreciated it if you told me what really happened rather than assuming I'm stupid enough to actually think you cut yourself on broken glass."

"Look, I just want to get in there and get Merasmus and hope that he has some way to reverse this so I don't have to spend the rest of my existence chained to the radiator in Sniper's basement!"

Spy looked at him amused. "His van has a basement?"

"I'm serious!"

"I am too," he replied. He nodded towards the underside of the dashboard. "You might want to finish that before everyone starts wondering what's taking so long."

Scout got the truck running in no time, but in his state Spy wouldn't let him drive it. He was content to just sit in the passenger seat leaning against the cold door as they drove back to the others. No sooner did they pull up to the tree where the rest of the team was waiting before Scout leaned out the window and threw up down the side of the door. Medic looked suspicious but said nothing while Sniper checked on him to make sure he was okay.

"So who's driving?" Demoman asked.

They were surprised when Pyro pushed past everyone else and got into the driver's seat and even more surprised when he seemed aggressively adamant on driving. He didn't seem upset and reclusive anymore at this point, he seemed downright pissed, and it was kind of scary seeing the normally childlike and innocent Pyro bring out the side normally only reserved for the BLU team.

"Everyone else ready?" Sniper inquired.

* * *

Merasmus was on the couch eating a bowl of cereal while Zombie John Wayne pawed at him in an attempt to eat him with more than half his face missing. "You know, this is not really your best film," he said of the western on TV.

He could hear more and more zombies pounding on the walls outside, but paid them no mind. The book had warned that the undead would be attracted to the source of their resurrection, so he had a foolproof plan in place to keep them from getting in. He simply locked all the doors and boarded up the windows. Clearly no zombie would ever be able to get past that line of defense! And if they did, he already had the reversal spell ready.

What he was more surprised about was hearing what sounded like the revving of a large engine outside. Surprised, he got up and walked to the window, peeking out through the slats in the wooden boards and saw what looked like headlights all the way at the edge of the horde. The vehicle plowed through the zombies and seemed to stall and get stuck somewhere in the middle. He stepped away from the window and shrugged. They'd be taken care of shortly.

He made it back to the couch and was about to change the channel when he heard an explosion that made his ancient blood run cold. That sounded like a rocket launcher. He knew of only one man who had access to a rocket launcher.

"Oh no, he's here?!" Merasmus groaned.

* * *

Engineer woke up at the sound of an explosion. The ground rattled and dust fell from the ceiling. The air smelled strongly of must and rodents and the floor was cold and seemed to be made of dirt. He slowly started to get up and realized he was in what looked like an old basement. The only light came from candles and lanterns and there was some occult paraphernalia laying about.

He heard a very scratchy and hoarse voice address him from the other side of the basement. "Oh, you're awake!"

Engineer looked through the dark and saw what he at first thought was a mummy but realized only a moment later that it was actually a woman in a wheelchair, a ball of yarn and some knitting needles in her lap. At least he assumed it was a woman. He couldn't tell by her voice and her appearance wasn't helping matters much. "Uh...pardon me, ma'am, but...how did ah get here?"

"You were banging on the cellar door, so I let you in," she replied. "I'm surprised you found it. It's so overgrown back there that not even the undead have been able to get through. I've been trying to get through back there for months! My son must have used a kudzu curse to keep me from escaping that way. Or maybe he just planted kudzu. I have no idea at this point."

"Yer...son?"

"Merasmus! My good for nothing son got tired of me nagging him to get a real job and stop mooching off of his roommates, so every house we stay in, he puts me down here in the basement with the rats. Though I have to say, it's a steady improvement from the dungeon back at his castle." The wheels of her chair screeched horribly as she moved to a table and retrieved a glass candy dish. "Hard candy?"

Engineer looked into the dish. The candies appeared to all be stuck together into one solid piece of butterscotch flavored terror. "Um...no thank you," he shook his head. "Wait, are you sayin' that we're in Merasmus' house right now?"

"Technically we're in John Wayne's house. My son is just freeloading in it," she replied.

"Look ma'am, it's imperative that ah speak to yer son. He's set zombies loose on the world and mah friends might be in danger!"

"If you want to talk to him, you're free to go upstairs and do so. I don't think he bothers to lock the door since I can't get up the stairs anyway," she replied. "It would be nice to be able to give him a piece of my mind, though...the nerve of that child, even after I raised him myself! His father would be rolling in his grave...come to think of it, he probably is right now. I wonder if the zombie curse reached that far?" She poked Engineer's ribs and looked at him disapprovingly. "You look thin. I should feed you! I think I have some fried rat leftover somewhere..."

"Uh, no thank you, ma'am. Ah just ate a gerbil on mah way over here." Engineer looked around and found a pile of tools that Merasmus' mother had moved to the corner. He looked to the stairs that lead up from the basement and then back at the shriveled up woman in the tattered shawl. "Ya got any plywood?"

* * *

The explosion from Soldier's rocket leveled out enough space for them to jump out of the truck. Pyro fired a flare into the crowd, lighting several zombies up. The burning corpses meandered forward before falling and those around them caught, causing the flicker to spread through a small part of the horde. Heavy opened fire, clearing a path through that they quickly ran down.

They soon realized that they'd need a distraction to draw out most of the zombies. Pyro shoved his hand into Medic's medical bag and dug around. "What exactly are you doing?!" Medic demanded.

He pulled his arm back out and was holding a bottle of isopropyl alcohol. He unscrewed the cap and splashed it on the interior of the truck until it was thoroughly drenched. Using his lighter, he lit the passenger seat. Instantly the inside of the vehicle was awash with flame, which quickly caught the rest of the truck and sent black plumes of smoke spiraling upward. The horde surrounded the blaze and flames rapidly spread throughout the deceased at a much quicker pace than the flare had.

"Good thinkin' on ya!" Demoman patted him on the back.

The team pressed on as most of the zombies converged behind them on the metallic blaze. Scout and Spy brought up the rear at a pace that Scout could handle. Worryingly the undead paid him no mind, almost as though they thought he was already one of them, while they assumed from Spy's disguise that he really was one of them. The last thing Scout wanted to do right now while he was running a high fever was be up on his feet and walking and Spy was practically carrying him through the crowd.

They made it to the front door and everyone was surprised with just how hard Pyro banged on it in a facsimile of a knock. "Who is it?" Merasmus demanded from the other side of the boarded up and broken window, as though he didn't already know who it was.

"UPS!" Scout shouted. "We're here to deliver your package!"

"I don't recall ordering anything. What's in it?"

"An arse kicking! Open the bloody door!" Sniper snapped.

"Mmmmm...no," Merasmus replied. "Go away. I'm watching TV!"

"Hi, Merasmus!" Soldier said cheerfully. "Lieutenant Bites says hi too!" He held the raccoon up to the window. It promptly shoved its paws in through the slats in one of the boards and reached for Merasmus so it could pull him closer and bite him.

"You brought that raccoon here?!" Merasmus shrieked at them. "You know the only thing less welcome in my home than you, Soldier, is that stupid raccoon! Go away! I do not wish to speak to any of you!"

They heard him stomp away from the door and back across the house. He didn't respond again when Pyro banged on the door once more and violently tried to force it open. If only he had his ax, he could really force his way in.

"I am worried about Pyro," Heavy whispered to Medic.

"Alright, so does anyone else have any..."

Pyro interrupted Sniper by shoving him aside. He realized that Pyro now had his kukri and was currently walking towards the large crowd of zombies that were swarming along the side of the house. They could hear the sounds of the blade slashing through wet meat and the thuds of the dead plummeting to the bloodstained grass that moved steadily along the side of the building and around to the back. The backdoor turned out to have been accidentally left unlocked, allowing Pyro to open it with ease and slam it back shut behind him.

"Hey, how did you get in here?!" they could hear Merasmus shouting as he marched through his living room and unlocked the front door. Pyro looked less than pleased when he reappeared on the other side of the door and shoved the bloodsoaked kukri back into Sniper's hands before disappearing back into the house.

"Oh crap," Merasmus grumbled when they were all standing in his living room. Pyro pulled his flare gun. He had been saving the last flare specifically for this purpose. "Wait, wait, we can talk about this, right?" Merasmus said defensively as Pyro backed him up into a corner. "Clearly you're angry. Maybe you should take a moment to calm down?" Pyro huffed at him and shoved the flare gun up against his face, making it clear that he was no longer playing around.

"Alright. You want to talk now?" Sniper asked.

"What do you want?"

Over Pyro's shoulder, Heavy, Medic, and Demoman all pointed towards the window where several arms had just shot through the gaps in between the boards and began reaching towards them with a hungry desperation.

"Have you gone outside lately?" Spy asked sardonically.

"Oh, the zombies!" he stated as though just noticing them now. "You want me to get rid of the zombies!"

"Yes! And bring Lieutenant Bites back from the dead!" Soldier replied. He stepped next to Pyro and held the snarling raccoon so close to his face that he found himself leaning towards the mouth of the flare gun to get away from it.

"I can probably stop the zombies, but do you really think I can cure the undead?!" Merasmus demanded.

Scout suddenly looked distressed. "You can't?"

"Well maybe I can, I haven't bothered to try," he admitted. "But what makes you think I want to?" The flare gun clicked and Merasmus suddenly became aware that the last thing he was about to see was his own reflection in the optical lenses of a thoroughly pissed off pyromaniac. "Okay, okay, I have suddenly found motivation! It's just that...look over there, what's that?" Pyro looked over his shoulder where he was pointing and was suddenly grabbed, the flare gun fumbled out of his hand and now pressed up against the side of his head.

The others suddenly jumped up, hoping to help him, but stopped when Merasmus made it clear that he would shoot him if they moved. "Pyro, you seriously fell for that?!" Scout shouted before his outburst caused him to cough hard enough that he vomited onto the carpet.

"Alright! I want all of you out of my house, right now!" Merasmus demanded. "I don't care that your raccoon is dead, I don't care if that kid over there becomes a zombie, and I certainly don't care about whatever it is that I did that made you so angry with me!" he shouted to Pyro. "I just want you all out of my house and I want Soldier to _leave me alone!"_

An ancient voice, all hoarse and gravelly from nearly 800 years of smoking, shouted from towards the top of the basement stairs, "MERASMUS!"

"Oh no..." Merasmus groaned, knowing what fury was about to unfold.

The door to the basement smashed open. Engineer pushed a wheelchair up a freshly built wooden ramp that contained the shriveled up and almost mummified looking old woman who could have given the zombies a run for their money in an ugly pageant.

"This is as far as I need to go, dearie. Thank you!" she said to Engineer.

"No problem, ma'am," Engineer nodded.

Pyro could be audibly noted as gulping for air when he saw Engineer. He yanked out of Merasmus' grip, shoved him to the floor, and bolted across the room, glomping Engineer hard enough to nearly shove him back down the stairs.

"I'm glad to see you're alright too!" Engineer said excitedly while he hugged him back.

The (apparently a) woman in the wheelchair then turned to Merasmus and angrily started screaming, "You leave me in a basement for 500 years and now I find out you unleashed the undead on the world again, all because you got into another petty squabble with your only friend?!"

"Mom, this is not a good time..." Merasmus began before being cut off. "And we are not friends!"

"Look here mister, I haven't seen daylight since I was 309 years old, and if this little sweetheart hadn't come along and built me a ramp so I could escape, I still wouldn't have remembered what natural light looked like!" She squinted at the flickering flames from the burning truck outside. "Honestly, it's a little more underwhelming than I remember..." She turned in her chair to Engineer and handed him the scarf she had been knitting while he worked on the ramp. "Here dearie, this is for you."

"Thanks!" Engineer said as he accepted the gift.

"What...you never knit me anything!" Merasmus pointed out.

"Because you're an idiot and a disappointment!" his mother replied. "Now put the dead back in their grave and bring that raccoon back to life, or you're grounded!"

"Fine...I'll undo the curse!" he complained. "Assuming they haven't been shot in the head yet, everyone who became a zombie during the apocalypse will come back to life! They will not be looking forward to their medical bills!"

"What about Scout?" Sniper asked coldly.

"He'll be fine," Merasmus replied.

"What about Lieutenant Bites?" Soldier asked. He tightly held onto the snarling, zombified raccoon as it thrashed in his grip and bit onto his arm.

"Yes!" he shouted distastefully. "The rodent will come back too."

"Raccoons are not rodents. They're members of the family "Procyonidae", which includes coatis and ringtails," Medic corrected.

"I don't really care!" Merasmus grumbled.

* * *

All across the United States and Mexico and some of the southernmost parts of Canada too, the undead began to drop left and right like gnats. The curse was undone and save for a few sad souls like the former chief of the TPD, loved ones were returned back to life, albeit many of them were screaming and panicking because of their missing limbs or gaping wounds.

Scout was still running a fever from infection, but at least he wasn't going to turn into a zombie because of it and all he needed were some antibiotics to clear it up. Soldier was happily chasing Lieutenant Bites through the house while Merasmus was cursing him for letting "that rodent" get into the cabinets and drawers, and the raccoon had already begun to stockpile snack foods and shiny things underneath the kitchen sink.

"There. I did what you asked. Now will you please leave?" Merasmus demanded.

"John Wayne!" Engineer said with relief when he saw the man walk up from behind Merasmus. "You're alive!"

"Yes, and I send my thanks to your medic for reversing the grenade damage," John Wayne replied. He looked to Merasmus and glared at him with an angry intensity. "Merasmus, I really think you should move out."

"What?! Why?!" Merasmus replied.

"Because you blew me up with a grenade, resurrected me as a zombie, and got coffee stains, blood, and vomit on my carpet," he pointed out.

There was a pause. "...but I made you better," Merasmus stated.

"And then one of your friends drove a car through my living room."

Everyone looked to the rental car that Demoman had driven through the wall, which was supposed to be their ride home. In hindsight, letting a drunk guy with poor depth perception get the rental wasn't a very bright decision on their part.

"HE IS _NOT_ ONE OF MY FRIENDS!" Merasmus shouted.

Soldier cheerfully clamped his arm around Merasmus' shoulders. "Cheer up, Merasmus! I know a place where you can stay!" he said jovially.

* * *

Merasmus and Sniper both sat side by side in the front seat of Sniper's camper van. Neither of them said anything to the other, but both were united by their burning hatefire for that idiot in the helmet who was currently running laps through the desert despite the fact that it was only 4:30 in the morning. They shivered in the cold of the desert night, and Sniper longed to be inside sleeping on his own bed instead of wrapped up in an old quilt in the driver's seat with a 600-year-old magician in the seat next to him.

"I hope you know this is only temporary," Sniper pointed out.

"Well, duh!" Merasmus replied. "Can you imagine doing this every night?"

There was a banging on the wall behind them. Merasmus' mother shouted, "MERASMUS! You and your friend keep it down! Mummy is trying to sleep!"

"Mummies! I haven't tried mummies yet!" Merasmus said as the idea occurred to him.

"Don't even think about it, mate," Sniper warned.

* * *

 _If you're about as old as I am, then you probably remember the chocolate episode of Spongebob and the shriveled up old fish in the wheelchair, which is pretty much what inspired the idea of Merasmus' mother._

 _Fun Fact: My Google search results now contain the phrase, "Can you use a baby as a flotation device?"_

 _Nicole's Note: Well folks, that's all there is! There isn't anymore! Let us know how you liked it and maybe I'll help write a story again sometime._


End file.
